War in Heaven

Williams gives a contemporary setting to the traditional story of the Search for the Holy Grail. Examining the distinction between magic and religion, War in Heaven is an eerily disturbing book, one that graphically portrays a metaphysical journey through the shadowy crevices of the human mind.

"The telephone was ringing wildly," begins Charles Williams's novel War in Heaven, "but without result, since there was no-one in the room but the corpse." From this abrupt--and darkly humorous--start, Williams takes us on a 20th-century version of the Grail quest, with an Archdeacon, a Duke, and an editor playing the old Arthurian roles. Throughout, Williams reminds us that these legends were above all about divine, not just human, romance. While filled with marvels and black magic, the novel also suggests that the devil just might be what the face of God looks like to those who have sought destruction, just as that face is love to those who have sought love. The choice, Williams affirms, is always ours. --Doug Thorpe

About the Author
(1886-1945) An intense, imaginative, magnetic person, Charles Williams was a member of the Inklings, the group of creative Oxford Christians of the 1930s and 1940s that included C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. Though he excelled in many literary genres, Williams is best remembered for his poetry and his original fiction—contemporary religious novels filled with suspense, mystery, and supernatural conflict.