Shadows of Ecstasy: A Novel

Charles Williams

Φεβ 2015 · Open Road Media

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A charismatic and immortal leader rises up out of Africa to violently alter humankind’s destiny

There is great unrest on the African continent, and explosive uprisings that originated there are finding their way to Britain’s shores. A man named Nigel Considine, a charismatic leader who calls himself the High Executive, is raising a great army to conquer the world. Universal love is his stated goal, to be achieved through violence if necessary, and his dogma has unleashed a terrible backlash of brutality, prejudice, and hatred throughout so-called civilized London. But who is this immortal prophet-king whose words inflame the passions of untold thousands of disciples? Is he a power-hungry madman, as the unrepentant agnostic Sir Bernard Travers has flatly stated, or is he the Antichrist, as Travers’s dearest friend, the vicar Ian Caithness, believes? Perhaps the deathless Considine is the light of the age—indeed, of all ages: a saintly personage to be adored and followed without qualm or question, as the poet Roger Ingram is beginning to suspect. But be he master criminal or twisted genius, supernatural demon or savior reborn, the High Executive’s coming is destined to change the world.

No twentieth-century author explored themes of faith, spirituality, and the supernatural with more verve and originality than the phenomenal Charles Williams, who along with colleagues C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Owen Barfield, was a member of the University of Oxford’s famed Inklings literary society. Blending fantasy adventure with breathtaking spiritual concepts, Williams’s acclaimed works, including Shadows of Ecstasy, are must-reads for any lover of intelligent, thought-provoking metaphysical fiction.

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Charles Williams (1886–1945) was a British author and longtime editor at Oxford University Press. He was one of the three most prominent members of the literary group known as the Inklings—the other two being C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. Williams wrote poetry, drama, biography, literary criticism, and more, but is best known for his novels, which explored the primal conflict between good and evil. T. S. Eliot, who wrote an introduction to Williams’s All Hallows’ Eve, praised the author’s “profound insight into . . . the heights of Heaven and the depths of Hell, which provides both the immediate thrill, and the permanent message of his novels,” and Time magazine called him “one of the most gifted and influential Christian writers England has produced this century.”