'Gilead is no less a masterpiece than Housekeeping' Sunday Times 'Stunning... there are gems on every page of Gilead, but it is the whole construction that marks it as a great work' Daily Telegraph 'The slow pulse of Robinson's writing slows the reader's eye and mind, and creates in the reading process a literary version of the narrator's spiritual experience. Gilead reminds us that words have power to spare, to forgive, to do justice' Independent 'A novel as big as a nation, as quiet as thought, and moving as prayer. Matchless and towering.' Kirkus Review 'Many writers try to capture life's universals... but Robinson truly succeeds in what is destined to become her second classic.' Publishers Weekly 'Gilead is a beautiful work-demanding, grave and lucid... Robinson's words has a spiritual force that's very rare in contemporary fiction' James Wood, New York Times Book Review 'Serenely beautiful... one feels touched with grace just to read it' Washington Post'Gilead is a beautiful work - demanding, grave and lucid ... Robinson's words have a spiritual force that's very rare in contemporary fiction' James Wood, New York Times Book Review 'Serenely beautiful, and written in a prose so gravely measured and thoughtful, that one feels touched with grace just to read it. There's nothing flashy in these pages, and yet one regularly pauses to reread sentences, sometimes for their beauty, sometimes for their truth ... A portrait of the human condition - prey to isolation and loneliness, ever needful of faith and love' - Washington Post 'The wait since 1981 and Housekeeping is over. Robinson returns with a second novel that, however quiet in tone and however delicate of step, will do no less than tell the story of America - and break your heart' Kirkus Review 'Gilead is a powerful and intense read, one that takes time, but gives bountiful rewards' Bookseller 'A first novel that sounds as if the author has been treasuring it up all her life...You can feel in the book a gathering voluptuous release of confidence, a delighted surprise at the unexpected capacities of language, a close, careful fondness for people that we thought only saints felt' - Anatole Broyard, The New York Times 'A work of enormous integrity... A beautiful book of ideas' The Atlantic Monthly 'A psalm worthy of study, a sermon of the loveliest profundity... A literary miracle' Entertainment Weekly

Marilynne Robinson was born in 1947. Her first novel, Housekeeping (1981) received the PEN/Hemingway award for best first novel as well as being nominated for the Pulitzer Prize