The Sacred Desert: Religion, Literature, Art, and Culture

Engaging with figures as diverse as Jesus, the early Christian Desert Fathers, William Blake, T.E. Lawrence, T.S. Eliot, Georgia O'Keeffe, Wim Wenders, Bill Viola, and Jim Crace, author David Jasper explores deserts as real places, as interior spaces and as they feature in numerous texts. He makes connections across millennia of desert texts, meditating on the mystical, religious and theological meanings that emerge. Underlying these interdisciplinary wanderings in the wasteland is the author's quest for a new form of religious thought and language. Lively and lucid, this outstanding work stretches from the Bible - perhaps still the greatest of our desert texts - through to contemporary experiences of the desert. It is truly an original work of theology, and a captivating journey through the history of religion.