Sanctuary

(Hardback)

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Sanctuary is an ancient right. But what does it mean today Drawing on a lifetime of engagement with literature, myth, history and tradition from different cultures, Marina Warner's Sanctuary is an ambitious attempt to grapple with the sharpest questions that we are facing in today's world of global turmoil.

Sanctuary is an ancient right a haven, a place of refuge and freedom from harm. In the classical world, it offered immunity to fugitives from justice; in medieval Europe it extended a reprieve to all who sought sanctuary in a church or holy site. It was a sacrilege to lay hands on a sanctuary-seeker: sanctuary was sacred.

But what are the principles that govern this ancient tradition Could a revived practice of sanctuary today offer security, a home for those who seek it What could sanctuary offer to those who have been displaced Or does the idea support excluding those of a certain race or creed

Increasingly, in keeping with the general growth of nationalism and individualism, the arc of the concept has been bending away from a place of openness and welcome towards a private safe place, a redoubt: home and homeland as sanctuaries to be defended against strangers, migrants, incomers.

In this groundbreaking book, the distinguished cultural historian Marina Warner explores the principles that underpin the tradition of sanctuary. She ranges broadly across myth and history and explores the concept of hospitality, the cult of relics, shrines and festivals, the imagination of place, and travelling tales. She asks profound questions about political ideas of a right to safety, home, freedom of movement, and peace.

Sanctuary was written alongside work with the project Stories in Transit which brings young refugees together with artists, writers and musicians in the UK and in Sicily to invent or reimagine stories and perform them. Marina Warner reflects on the ways stories address the worst experiences of humanity and argues that the act of storytelling offers a salve, a route to a site of mutual interaction and understanding, a new place of belonging and conviviality. The book draws on a lifetime of engagement with literature, myth, history and tradition from different cultures. It is an ambitious attempt to grapple with the sharpest questions that we are facing in a world of global turmoil. Warners inquiry could not be more relevant.

Reviews

PRAISE FOR MARINA WARNERS INVENTORY OF A LIFE MISLAID

Wonderful a brave, inventive, touching distillation of memory and imagination, shimmering with images, sounds and scents, conjuring a clash of lives, worlds and words

Jenny Uglow

A captivating re-creation of her childhood in a lost Cairo, so incomparably louche, sensuous and fragrant, and of her parents improbable marriage

Ferdinand Mount

An entrancing weave of memoir, history, autobiography and fiction, this adventurous book voyages through time and space to re-discover, re-imagine and reinvent a lost world. One of Marina Warner's most beautiful works

Michle Roberts

Moving and original Warners view of the past is always precise, at once generous and exacting. She has a gift for using objects to conjure up characters, feelings and atmospheres Poignant and exquisitely crafted, Inventory of a Life Mislaid is bound to become a classic

Catriona Seth

A poignant and imaginatively transgressive exploration of her parents marriage, a war time love match between Southern Italy and upper class England Evocative

Margaret Drabble

High-risk and multidimensional Warner brings to these pages a lifetime of thinking about stories and the ways in which they shape our lives

Literary Review

This is a wonderful rich, partly mythical memoir that sifts through the past to connect a familys secrets to the deep-rooted colonial assumptions that still resonate in a post-Brexit Britain never dull Eloquent and heartbreaking

TLS

Poignant and mythical

New Statesman

Warner is such a skilful and imaginative writer that much of the book reads like lived experience the happiest of concoctions, a mix of fiction and fact, observation and speculation This brave, painful, dazzling memoir is riveting

Spectator

Author Bio

Marina Warner is a writer of fiction and cultural history and has published many award-winning works, including Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and Cult of the Virgin Mary, Joan of Arc: The Image of Female Heroism, Monuments & Maidens, critical studies of fairy tales and the thousand and one nights (Stranger Magic) and a memoir, Inventory of a Life Mislaid, about her parents life in Cairo during the 1950s.

She read French and Italian at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. She is a Fellow of the British Academy and served as President of the Royal Society of Literature (2017-21). In 2015 she was awarded the Holberg Prize in the Arts and Humanities. The same year she was made DBE and, in 2022, a Companion of Honour. She is Professor of English and Creative Writing at Birkbeck and a Distinguished Fellow at All Souls, Oxford. She lives in London