Unapologetic: Why, despite everything, Christianity can still make surprising emotional sense

by Francis Spufford (Author), Francis Spufford (Author)

New
Paperback
2013
$12.25

Unapologetic is a brief, witty, personal, sharp-tongued defence of Christianity, taking on Dawkins' The God Delusion and Christopher Hitchens' God is Not Great. Its argument is that Christianity is recognisable, drawing on the deep and deeply ordinary vocabulary of human feeling, satisfying those who believe by offering a ruthlessly realistic account of the bits of our lives advertising agencies prefer to ignore. It's a book for believers who are fed up with being patronised, for non-believers curious about how faith can possibly work in the twenty-first century, and for anyone who feels there is something indefinably wrong, literalistic, anti-imaginative and intolerant about the way the case for atheism is now being made. Fresh, provoking and unhampered by niceness, this is the long-awaited riposte to the smug emissaries of New Atheism.

Synopsis

Unapologetic is a brief, witty, personal, sharp-tongued defence of Christianity, taking on Dawkins' The God Delusion and Christopher Hitchens' God is Not Great. Its argument is that Christianity is recognisable, drawing on the deep and deeply ordinary vocabulary of human feeling, satisfying those who believe by offering a ruthlessly realistic account of the bits of our lives advertising agencies prefer to ignore. It's a book for believers who are fed up with being patronised, for non-believers curious about how faith can possibly work in the twenty-first century, and for anyone who feels there is something indefinably wrong, literalistic, anti-imaginative and intolerant about the way the case for atheism is now being made. Fresh, provoking and unhampered by niceness, this is the long-awaited riposte to the smug emissaries of New Atheism.

$12.25

Save:$1.64 (12%)

Quantity

20+ in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 240
Edition: Main
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 07 Mar 2013
ISBN 10: 0571225225
ISBN 13: 9780571225224
Book Overview: Unapologetic is a brief, witty, personal, sharp-tongued defence of Christianity by Francis Spufford, taking on Dawkins' The God Delusion and Christopher Hitchens' God is Not Great.

Media Reviews

A unique book, cutting its way ruthlessly through thickets of both religious and anti-religious sentimentality; painfully funny at points, always impassioned and never glib. Rowan Williams, Master, Magdalene College, Cambridge University and former Archbishop of Canterbury Spufford has the great virtue of making the reader want to argue with him, while simultaneously yearning to hear more. Daily Telegraph Remarkable, passionate, challenging and tumultuously articulate book ... this is Spufford's most fascinating book. Our Choice, Sunday Times An interesting additional to the religious cannon ... a refreshing approach, which makes the book far more palatable than the nearly hysterical polemics we have come to expect from both sides. Spufford writes well, and his rationality shines through here. Sunday Business Post

Author Bio

Francis Spufford, a former Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year (1997), has edited two acclaimed literary anthologies and a collection of essays about the history of technology. His first book, I May Be Some Time, won the Writers' Guild Award for Best Non-Fiction Book of 1996, the Banff Mountain Book Prize and a Somerset Maugham Award. His second, The Child That Books Built, gave Neil Gaiman 'the peculiar feeling that there was now a book I didn't need to write'. His third, Backroom Boys, was called 'as nearly perfect as makes no difference' by the Daily Telegraph and was shortlisted for the Aventis Prize. His fourth, Red Plenty was called 'odd, brilliant and crazily brave' in the Evening Standard, longlisted for the Orwell Prize and translated into eight languages. His latest book, Unapologetic, was described by Nick Hornby as 'an incredibly smart, challenging, and beautiful book'. In 2007 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He teaches writing at Goldsmiths College and lives near Cambridge.