[NYer]

As a young monk and anthropology student, Gruber impulsively selected his dissertation topic contemporary Coptic monasteries after leafing through a National Geographic article on the Nile. The Copts, whose ancestors go back to the time of the Pharaohs, today comprise about 10% of Egypt's population; most practice an ancient form of Christianity that is distinct from Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. Coptic monasteries in the Sahara desert became the topic of Gruber's year-long field study and a lifelong focus of personal and professional interest. More than a decade after his year in the desert, he began consulting his notes, letters, interviews and memories in order to create this memoir, whose form is part spiritual journal, part travelogue. It does not entirely succeed in either category. As a spiritual journal, it is distressingly exterior: Gruber reproduces long theological conversations with fellow monks, supplies interesting facts about liturgy and monastic daily life and composes formal prayers, but gives little sense of the interior struggles he must have endured if the year was as transformational as he claims. As a travelogue, his account needs updating; the events depicted took place in 1986-1987, and Gruber nowhere ties them to current Middle Eastern realities. Nevertheless, he tells good stories, like the one about the miracle he inadvertently performed while waiting for a Marian apparition. And who could forget the singing octogenarian who hiked up a mountain with him the week the mercury hit 130 and the thermometers exploded?

Highly recommend this book! It provides tremendous insight into the Coptic monastic life through the lens of a RC monk. Enjoy!

[mkmensinger]

I’m pretty sure original librarian there now works in my local library.

[Chainmail]

St. Catherine’s is a true treasure. I was fortunate to have visited that monastery several times in the late 80s and they have a magnificent collection of very early portraits of Jesus and the saints.

[Teflonic]

The Library of Trinity College Dublin is my favorite old library:

[FroggyTheGremlim]

Imagine the fine on an unreturned book borrowed in 550 AD!

[Sergio]

bkmk

[DannyTN]

If it’s anywhere near Sinai, I hope they made digital copies of everything and have it stored off-site.

[Lent]

What that bloody little piece about the Fatimid Caliphate didn’t tell you is that it was this Caliphate which actually desecrated the site built by Justinian I by converting an existing chapel to a mosque. Oh yeah quid pro quo.

[Kolokotronis]

The monastery is in and of itself, an autocephalous Orthodox Church, the same as Alexandria or Antioch or Constantinople!

[catnipman]

I wonder if they have the Harry Potter scrolls in the original Greek and Latin?

[Intolerant in NJ]

For example, it accommodates the oldest continuously operating active library in the world...wonder if it would be easier to get a book there than to get a glock.....

[cloudmountain]

Uh oh, you wrote something positive about Mohammed and Muslims.

Will you get to choose your manner of death?
Is it to be the guillotine? I hope not! Owwwww.

[D-fendr]

Beautiful, fascinating and inspiring! Thanks for posting.