The Lion's World
A Journey into the Heart of Narnia
Rowan Williams
Reviews and Awards
''Reading Rowan Williams on C. S. Lewis is like watching two old friends in animated discussion of great, powerful themes. It helps that both are (of course) highly literate: Shakespeare, Thomas Merton, Augustine and others flit across the pages. It helps more that both write with lucid and engaging clarity. But what really counts is that we constantly sense a third presence, that of the Lion who will not let us rest in our own little self-deceits but who constantly challenges us to discover the larger joys of his new creation. Those who have loved Narnia since childhood will here discover fresh and sometimes disturbing depths of meaning and power. Those who don't know it will be stimulated to read the stories for themselves. Those who have tried to debunk Lewis and his children's books will find Williams more than a match for them, not as an uncritical apologist but as a wise and humane expositor.'' ---N. T. Wright, Research Professor of New Testament & Early Christianity, St Andrews
''I have often thought there was more to Lewis than is often noticed by his enthusiastic readers. Now he has Rowan Williams who helps us see that Lewis, who certainly had his limits, was an extraordinary imaginative mind who was able to "rinse out what is stale in our thinking about Christianity." Williams' account of the Narnia Chronicles, therefore, helps us rinse out any too-easy criticisms of Lewis. And together Lewis and Williams enable us to imagine what it might mean to see God in the everyday. We are in Rowan Williams' debt for this deft reading of C.S. Lewis.'' ---Stanley Hauerwas, Professor of Theological Ethics, Duke Divinity School, North Carolina
"The Lion's World merits close reading, opening up as it does fresh vistas on tales that, the very moment we think we know them, surprise us again in a thousand new and astonishing ways." --Reformation 21
"...Williams's interpretation of the Narnia books provides new insight on what might appear to be an old, worn out topic. In doing this, Williams provides his readers with not only a fresh vision of Narnia, but with a new model for understanding themselves." --Mythlore
