Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #47342 in Books
• Published on: 2002-01-25
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Synopsis
In this classic Catholic novel, Bernanos movingly recounts the life of a young French country priest who grows to understand his provincial parish while learning spiritual humility himself. Awarded the Grand Prix for Literature by the Academie Francaise, The Diary of a Country Priest was adapted into an acclaimed film by Robert Bresson. "A book of the utmost sensitiveness and compassion...it is a work of deep, subtle and singularly encompassing art. " New York Times Book Review (front page)

Customer Reviews

Concede yourself the reading of this gem!
I am not religious, yet this book is a permanent source of inspiration for me. I believe this comes from the beauty of the life it describes, rather than of doctrines. This is perhaps the most relevant book I ever read, and also one of the best in whatever sense.

The agony and spiritual ecstasy of the priesthood is here.
Bernanos's "Diary" represents that rarest of glimses into the clerical world: a view that is utterly convincing and completely enthralling! As the author pursues the early life and career of a French provincial Abbe, he simultaneously reveals the sufferings, triumphs, and struggles of the people that the young priest serves. Parallel to the tribulations of their lives, Bernanos lovingly shows how deeply one man, one priest can empathize with those he serves. While Bernanos never became a priest himself, his early life prepared him to write this, his greatest novel. The poignancy of this small novel is one that builds gradually. The impatient reader may, at first, not "connect" with the story, but the faithful reader will soon find that he/she cannot put it down. The last 30 pages of this work are one of the 20th century's masterpieces of spiritual prosody that I can identify.

Maybe the most influential book I ever read
Along with Dorothy Day's The Long Loneliness, Diary is one of the books that helped convince me to become a Catholic. The priest's dying words--"Grace is everywhere"--sum up for me the Faith and what I want from and in my life.