A Charles Williams Reader

This reader brings together three of Charles Williams’s best-known novels—Descent into Hell, Many Dimensions, and War in Heaven. These powerful stories represent the high point of Charles Williams’s genius and illustrate the mystically and theologically oriented themes so characteristic of his work. Whether read independently or as a loose trilogy, each of these psychological thrillers explores our very real relation to the supernatural world lying just behind the appearances of daily life.

The first selection, Descent into Hell (1937), is arguably Charles Williams’s greatest novel. It is a multidimensional story about people who close themselves in with self-centeredness until they are no longer able to love. The result is hell on earth. Many Dimensions (1931) offers a haunting look at the evil that penetrates the human heart. Replete with rich religious imagery, this tale explores the nature of predestination and free will and the ends to which they lead. In War in Heaven (1930), Charles Williams gives a contemporary setting to the traditional story of the search for the Holy Grail. This eerily disturbing work takes readers on a Bunyanesque journey through the shadowy places of the human mind.

Now available for the first time in a single volume, these three classic novels by one of the masters of religious fiction are sure to delight a new generation of readers.