This site uses cookies to deliver our services, improve performance, for analytics, and (if not signed in) for advertising. By using LibraryThing you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Your use of the site and services is subject to these policies and terms.
Winner of the 1961 Hugo Award for Best Novel and widely considered one of the most accomplished, powerful, and enduring classics of modern speculative fiction, Walter M. Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz is a true landmark of twentieth-century literature??a chilling and still-provocative look at a postapocalyptic future.
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 the blessed 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 retains its ability to enthrall and amaze. It is now, as it always has been, a masterpiece.… (more)
RyderAuthorResources: There are many similarities: both consist of three related novellas that tell one book-spanning story; both deal with the "problem" of peace; both are filled with compassionate insight; and both have made me cry more than once.
She leaned close to whisper behind her hand. “I need be giving shriv’ness to Him, as well.” The priest recoiled slightly. “To whom? I don’t understand.” “Shriv’ness-to Him who made me as I am,” she whimpered. But then a slow smile spread her mouth. “I-I never forgave Him for it.” “Forgive God? How can you-? He is just. He is Justice, He is Love. How can you say-?” Her eyes pleaded with him. “Mayn’t an old tumater woman forgive Him just a little for His Justice? Afor I be asking His shriv’ness on me?”
A book about hope, death, suffering, endings, nostalgia, heritage, preservation, change, what actually matters, whether a small group of people has the power to change the world, tradition, and other stuff that I'm bad at articulating. Pretty depressing too. It gives an amazing sense of time passing, of how things change, how people forget and remember. The society presented feels real.
I came away with a feeling of just how important nuclear disarmament is, how important peace is, how disgusting justifications for war are. I feel like there's more to say but it's hard to articulate, there's a lot to think about that feels like it needs an essay to put into words.
The ending is a little weird and it's really depressing sometimes and the Latin can be a bit confusing with no translation (BUT whenever it's key to the story it's translated) but otherwise it's great.
Also, I will say that although they get only minimal mention in the book: I have strong sympathy for the "Simpletons" (very minor early spoiler) who burned the books. ( )
This is my book. I hardly ever read books twice, but I've read this at least four times. I'm not sure I can write anything about it that would be useful for another person. I find it utterly wrenching, sorrowful, human. ( )
The dystopian novel is different from most of the more contemporary ones that I have read. While it is clearly set in a post-apocalyptic world, it deals more with whether man can learn from past mistakes or if human nature & time combine to make that impossible to some extent. Religion (specifically a form of Catholicism) plays a role but actually that was less than I had expected based upon the title and cover art.
My favorite section was the beginning during the new "Dark Ages" but that was probably due in part to the fact that in this section, there's the most hope that the future will be better, or at least different, from the past. Also, I found the finding and puzzling over 'artifacts' fun.
There were some aspects of the story I found perplexing and am still mulling over, such as the recurring old man... ( )
a dedication is only a scratch where it itches— for ANNE, then in whose bosom RACHEL lies muselike guiding my clumsy song and giggling between the lines —with blessings, Lass W
First words
Brother Francis Gerard of Utah might never have discovered the blessed documents, had it not been for the pilgrim with girded loins who appeared during that young novice's Lenten fast in the desert.
Quotations
There were spaceships again in that century, and the ships were manned by fuzzy impossibilities that walked on two legs and sprouted tufts of hair in unlikely anatomical regions. They were a garrulous kind. They belonged to a race quite capable of admiring its own image in a mirror, and equally capable of cutting its own throat before the alter of some tribal god, such as the deity of Daily Shaving. It was a species which often considered itself to be, basically, a race of divinely inspired tool makers; any intelligent entity from Arcturus would instantly have perceived them to be, basically, a race of impassioned after-dinner speechmakers.
“The closer men came to perfecting for themselves a paradise, the more impatient they seemed to become with it, and with themselves as well. They made a garden of pleasure, and became progressively more miserable with it as it grew into richness and power and beauty; for then, perhaps, it was easier for them to see that something was missing in the garden, some tree or shrub that would not grow. When the world was in darkness and wretchedness, it could believe in perfection and yearn for it. But when the world became bright with reason and riches, it began to sense the narrowness of the needle’s eye, and that rankled for a world no longer willing to believe or yearn. Well, they were going to destroy it again, were they-this garden Earth, civilized and knowing, to be torn apart again that Man might hope again in wretched darkness.” (page 285)
Brother Francis was copying only the body of the text onto new parchment, leaving spaces for the splendid capitals and margins as wide as the text lines. Other craftsmen would fill in riots of colour around his simply inked copy and would construct the pictorial capitals.
Brother Francis found the finest available lambskin and spent several weeks of his spare time at curing it and stretching it and stoning it to a perfect surface, which he eventually bleached to a snowy whiteness.
Last words
A wind came across the ocean, sweeping with it a pall of fine white ash. The ash fell into the sea and into the breakers. The breakers washed dead shrimp ashore with the driftwood. Then they washed up the whiting. The shark swam out to his deepest waters and brooded in the cold clean currents. He was very hungry that season.
Miller published a short story in 1955 with this title. Please do not combine the novel with the short story.
Publisher's editors
Blurbers
Original language
Canonical DDC/MDS
Canonical LCC
▾References
References to this work on external resources.
Wikipedia in English
None
▾Book descriptions
Fiction.
Science Fiction.
HTML:
Winner of the 1961 Hugo Award for Best Novel and widely considered one of the most accomplished, powerful, and enduring classics of modern speculative fiction, Walter M. Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz is a true landmark of twentieth-century literature??a chilling and still-provocative look at a postapocalyptic future.
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 the blessed 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 retains its ability to enthrall and amaze. It is now, as it always has been, a masterpiece.
▾Library descriptions
No library descriptions found.
▾LibraryThing members' description
Book description
Set in a Catholic monastery in the desert of the southwestern United States after a devastating nuclear war, the story spans thousands of years as civilization rebuilds itself. The monks of the fictional Albertian Order of Leibowitz take up the mission of preserving the surviving remnants of man's scientific knowledge until the day the outside world is again ready for it.
)
)
)
Google Books — Loading...
A Canticle for Leibowitz (Book 10) discussion
Wikipedia in English
1
A book about hope, death, suffering, endings, nostalgia, heritage, preservation, change, what actually matters, whether a small group of people has the power to change the world, tradition, and other stuff that I'm bad at articulating. Pretty depressing too. It gives an amazing sense of time passing, of how things change, how people forget and remember. The society presented feels real.
I came away with a feeling of just how important nuclear disarmament is, how important peace is, how disgusting justifications for war are. I feel like there's more to say but it's hard to articulate, there's a lot to think about that feels like it needs an essay to put into words.
The ending is a little weird and it's really depressing sometimes and the Latin can be a bit confusing with no translation (BUT whenever it's key to the story it's translated) but otherwise it's great.
Also, I will say that although they get only minimal mention in the book: I have strong sympathy for the "Simpletons" (very minor early spoiler)