The Sign of the Cross: Travels in Catholic Europe

(Paperback)

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Description

Part travelogue, part reportage, part autobiography, The Sign of the Cross is the story of Colm Tibn's religious pilgrimage across Europe. Between 1990 and 1994, Colm Tibn made a series of trips through Catholic Europe. His journey led him into close contact with people from all walks of life, from priests to politicians, from the intellectually open to the spiritually bigoted. He then set down his impressions in The Sign of the Cross, a beautifully written book filled with personal detail set within its historical context. Now part of the Picador Collection, a series showcasing the very best of modern literature.

Reviews

Colm Tibn writes beautifully in a spare style that allows for plain description, high humour and effects that are carefully toned. He is at once an honest, uncertain pilgrim with a press card and a sense of devilment, and a son on an Oedipal trail. * Irish Times *
A mixture of autobiography, travelogue and journalism which tantalizes the reader with what it withholds as much as it entertains and instructs with what it describes . . . The Sign of the Cross, like all good writing, is a treat. * Independent on Sunday *
This book describing Colm Tibns journey is written with the novelists familiar clarity and wisdom. It is as much a record of the European Catholic psyche in different political climates as it is an introspective pilgrimage to see what stuff Tibns own faith is made of. * Daily Telegraph *

Author Bio

Colm Tibn was born in Ireland in 1955. He is the author of eleven novels, including The Master, Brooklyn, and The Magician, and two collections of stories. He has been three times shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In 2021, he was awarded the David Cohen Prize for Literature. Tibn was appointed the Laureate for Irish Fiction 2022-2024.