A Canticle For Leibowitz - Softcover

Walter M. Miller Jr.

3.98

109,431 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0553257498 ISBN 13: 9780553257496

Publisher: Bantam, 1984

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Winner of the 1961 Hugo Award for Best Science Fiction Novel

One of the most accomplished, powerful, and enduring classics of modern speculative fiction, this is a chilling, provocative look at a postapocalyptic future. A true landmark of twentieth-century literature.

In a nightmarish, ruined world, slowly awakening to the light after sleeping in darkness, the infantile rediscoveries of science are secretly nourished by cloistered monks dedicated to the study and preservation of the relics and writings of Saint Isaac Leibowitz. From here the story spans centuries of ignorance, violence, and barbarism, viewing through a sharp, satirical eye the relentless progression of a human race damned by its inherent humanness to recelebrate its grand foibles and repeat its grievous mistakes. Seriously funny, stunning, tragic, eternally fresh, imaginative, and altogether remarkable, A Canticle for Leibowitz is now, as it always has been, a masterpiece.

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Review:

Walter M. Miller's acclaimed SF classic A Canticle for Leibowitz opens with the accidental excavation of a holy artifact: a creased, brittle memo scrawled by the hand of the blessed Saint Leibowitz, that reads: "Pound pastrami, can kraut, six bagels--bring home for Emma." To the Brothers of Saint Leibowitz, this sacred shopping list penned by an obscure, 20th-century engineer is a symbol of hope from the distant past, from before the Simplification, the fiery atomic holocaust that plunged the earth into darkness and ignorance. As 1984 cautioned against Stalinism, so 1959's A Canticle for Leibowitz warns of the threat and implications of nuclear annihilation. Following a cloister of monks in their Utah abbey over some six or seven hundred years, the funny but bleak Canticle tackles the sociological and religious implications of the cyclical rise and fall of civilization, questioning whether humanity can hope for more than repeating its own history. Divided into three sections--Fiat Homo (Let There Be Man), Fiat Lux (Let There Be Light), and Fiat Voluntas Tua (Thy Will Be Done)--Canticle is steeped in Catholicism and Latin, exploring the fascinating, seemingly capricious process of how and why a person is canonized. --Paul Hughes

From the Publisher:

"Extraordinary...chillingly effective."
--Time

"Angry, eloquent...a terrific story."
--The New York Times

"An extraordinary novel...Prodigiously imaginative, richly comic, terrifyingly grim, profound both intellectually and morally, and, above all...simply such a memorable story as to stay with the reader for years."
--Chicago Tribune

"An exciting and imaginative story...Unconditionally recommended."
--Library Journal

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