The Devil Rides Outside

Book condition is good. Hard cover. Dust jacket good, repaired as the front right-hand corner has reasonable tear, some minor top edge wear and bottom as well. Book block as some foxing on the top and side, bottom clean of foxing. Book boards clean front and back. Spine intact. Ex-owner name on the rear of the front book boards. Some light foxing on the first fly leaf page. Spine intact. Text body clean throughout the book. Over-all a good condition book. See photos for more information on condition. The Devil Rides Outside a "staggering novel." The first novel of John H. Griffin, it written during the author's decade of blindness following an injury suffered during the closing days of World War II. As Time Magazine described it, The Devil Rides Outside "has some things relatively rare in U.S. letters: energy, earnestness and unashamed religious fervor." Written as a diary, the novel relates the intellectual and spiritual battles of a young American musicologist who is studying Gregorian chant in a French Benedictine monastery. Even though he is not Catholic, he must live like the monks, sleeping in a cold stone cell, eating poor food, sharing latrine duties. His dreams rage with memories of his Paris mistress; his days are spent being encouraged by the monks to seek God. He takes up residence outside the monastery after an illness, but he finds the village a slough of greed and pettiness and temptation. Indeed, as the French proverb says, "the devil rides outside the monastery walls. The dust jacket is repaired with acid free stick tape.…