As the men maintain routines of worship in the face of futility, the novel asks whether they should be answerable to God or to one another.'- New Yorker, 'Briefly Noted' Donoghue evokes their devotional seriousness with a descriptive texture that is equally alert to a flock of cormorants taking flight 'by some collusion, ' or to the whittling of a makeshift pipe. 'In this novel of religious discovery, set in the seventh century, three Irish monks make a fraught journey from their monastery to Great Skellig, a craggy rock formation in the Atlantic that resembles 'the most gigantic of cathedrals.' Switching perspectives among the monks, the narrative tracks their escalating discord as they endeavor to construct a new monastic settlement there. In such a place, what will survival mean? Drifting out into the Atlantic, the three men find an impossibly steep, bare island inhabited by tens of thousands of birds, and claim it for God. Taking two monks-young Trian and old Cormac-he rows down the river Shannon in search of an isolated spot on which to found a monastery. In seventh-century Ireland, a scholar and priest called Artt has a dream telling him to leave the sinful world behind. In this beautiful story of adventure and survival from the New York Times bestselling author of Room, three men vow to leave the world behind them as they set out in a small boat for an island their leader has seen in a dream, with only faith to guide them.

About the Book In this beautiful story of adventure and survival from the New York Times bestselling author of Room, three men vow to leave the world behind them as they set out in a small boat for an island their leader has seen in a dream, with only faith to guide them.

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