Beginning the World

By Karen Armstrong

1983

First Published

3.71

Average Rating

243

Number of Pages

7H25M

Audio Length

Karen Armstrong relived her seven years as a nun in Through the Narrow Gate, a compelling depiction of the cloistered life that received widespread acclaim. Now she returns with the even more fascinating account of her life, after leaving the convent, the story of a young woman of twenty-four totally unprepared for the shock of confronting the real world. Writing with both sensitivity and wit, Karen describes the agonies of adjustment to a world in which people touched each other, laughed, drank wine...made love. She tells of her painful realization that her body and even her mind were resisting the changes she was imposing on them, to the point that she began to doubt her sanity. But she also writes of the tenderness of friendship and the awakening of passion, the growing understanding that the soul could not be saved at the expense of the body.

Avg Rating

3.71

Number of Ratings

5 STARS

22%

4 STARS

43%

3 STARS

25%

2 STARS

1 STARS

goodreads

Author

Karen Armstrong

Author · 29 books

Karen Armstrong, a comparative religion specialist is the author of numerous books on religion, including The Case for God, A History of God, The Battle for God, Holy War, Islam, Buddha, and Fields of Blood, as well as a memoir, The Spiral Staircase. Her work has been translated into 45 languages. In 2008 she was awarded the TED Prize and began working with TED on the Charter for Compassion, created online by the general public, crafted by leading thinkers in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism. It was launched globally in the fall of 2009. Also in 2008, she was awarded the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Medal. In 2013, she received the British Academy’s inaugural Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Trans cultural Understanding.