THE FOLIO SOCIETY

'I ... wandered still further from you, into ever more barren sins which could bear no fruit but sorrow'

Proud of his own abilities and deaf to his mother's warnings, from the age of 16 the young Augustine plunged into love affairs and excess. Yet even in the midst of worldly success, he was aware of an inner emptiness, a spiritual heartache that drove him questioning and struggling for meaning. There is great beauty in the heart-felt simplicity with which Augustine lays out his youthful transgressions and his search for understanding. His Confessions is the first autobiography in western literature and J. P. Pilkington's translation preserves the immediacy and the lyrical elegance of Augustine's style. Here is the personal story of one man's spiritual journey and revelation at a turning point in history - the collapse of pagan antiquity and the rise of a new order - the Church.

To many, St Augustine is the foremost of the church fathers, the great intellectual who employed the philosophy of the ancient world to lay the foundations of Western Christianity. Yet in his Confessions, the reader forgets his authority and sainthood. Instead a very real human being speaks directly across the centuries - flawed but questing, passionate but doubt-ridden.