In this enormously engaging book, Richard Harries shares with us his reading of many of the great writers of modernity, inviting us to attend with him to their wrestling with the hardest questions of human existence before God - and sometimes before the apparent absence of God. These are enriching and provoking reflections, testimony to the way that the Christian gospel continues to be a vehicle for the most serious thinking and imagining in our culture. * Rowan Williams, Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge * A compelling narrative of the modern quest for meaning and the expression, in literature, of our age's deep wrestling with faith. * Jane Shaw, Principal of Harris Manchester College, Oxford * Richard Harries sweeps through writers from Dostoevsky to Marilynne Robinson, including Emily Dickinson, Samuel Beckett and Evelyn Waugh - and points out how their Christianity was sometimes submerged and often neglected by critics and readers. This book rightly and authoritatively, without beating the drum, resurrects the profound spiritual tradition of Christianity over a century that often claimed to have stamped it out. Here, see it alive and well, subtly and with fine scholarship unveiled. This is a rich and important book. I hugely enjoyed it. * Melvyn Bragg, writer and broadcaster *