Jack Dudley is Delaplaine Distinguished Teaching Professor and Associate Professor of English at Mount Saint Mary's University. His articles have appeared in a range of journals. He was one of twelve invited consultants for the Christian Poetics Initiative (Rivendell Center for Theology and the Arts, Yale University).

'Combining inventive close readings and rigorous archival research, The New Believers: Religion and the Contemporary Novel offers a gripping, authoritative, and meticulous account of the important position and function of spirituality in the contemporary novel. The focus is on the 21st-century novels of Margaret Atwood, J. M. Coetzee, Junot Díaz, and George Saunders, but so many other texts and voices enter the conversation: from Augustine to Auden, Stephen King to Jack Chick, St. Matthew to Melville and The Matrix. Dudley's book is as impressive as it is inspiring.' Christos Hadjiyiannis, Assistant Professor in British Studies, University of Regensburg

• Introduction: the new believers; 1. Margaret Atwood and the better story; 2. J. M. Coetzee, curious belief, and the life of contemplation; 3. Junot Díaz, cosmic vision, and radical hope; 4. George Saunders and the Buddhist order of compassion; Conclusion: the spiritual life of the novel – ontology, subjectivity, collectivity, teleology.

Jack Dudley is Delaplaine Distinguished Teaching Professor and Associate Professor of English at Mount Saint Mary's University. His articles have appeared in a range of journals. He was one of twelve invited consultants for the Christian Poetics Initiative (Rivendell Center for Theology and the Arts, Yale University).

'Combining inventive close readings and rigorous archival research, The New Believers: Religion and the Contemporary Novel offers a gripping, authoritative, and meticulous account of the important position and function of spirituality in the contemporary novel. The focus is on the 21st-century novels of Margaret Atwood, J. M. Coetzee, Junot Díaz, and George Saunders, but so many other texts and voices enter the conversation: from Augustine to Auden, Stephen King to Jack Chick, St. Matthew to Melville and The Matrix. Dudley's book is as impressive as it is inspiring.' Christos Hadjiyiannis, Assistant Professor in British Studies, University of Regensburg

• Introduction: the new believers; 1. Margaret Atwood and the better story; 2. J. M. Coetzee, curious belief, and the life of contemplation; 3. Junot Díaz, cosmic vision, and radical hope; 4. George Saunders and the Buddhist order of compassion; Conclusion: the spiritual life of the novel – ontology, subjectivity, collectivity, teleology.

Jack Dudley is Delaplaine Distinguished Teaching Professor and Associate Professor of English at Mount Saint Mary's University. His articles have appeared in a range of journals. He was one of twelve invited consultants for the Christian Poetics Initiative (Rivendell Center for Theology and the Arts, Yale University).

'Combining inventive close readings and rigorous archival research, The New Believers: Religion and the Contemporary Novel offers a gripping, authoritative, and meticulous account of the important position and function of spirituality in the contemporary novel. The focus is on the 21st-century novels of Margaret Atwood, J. M. Coetzee, Junot Díaz, and George Saunders, but so many other texts and voices enter the conversation: from Augustine to Auden, Stephen King to Jack Chick, St. Matthew to Melville and The Matrix. Dudley's book is as impressive as it is inspiring.' Christos Hadjiyiannis, Assistant Professor in British Studies, University of Regensburg

• Introduction: the new believers; 1. Margaret Atwood and the better story; 2. J. M. Coetzee, curious belief, and the life of contemplation; 3. Junot Díaz, cosmic vision, and radical hope; 4. George Saunders and the Buddhist order of compassion; Conclusion: the spiritual life of the novel – ontology, subjectivity, collectivity, teleology.