Here’s what people have been saying about The Writing on the Wall

Alan Wilson at Bishop Alan’s Blog:

…Enter Maggi Dawn, and her new book The Writing on the Wall. It’s a trip through the Bible for the biblically ignorant but otherwise educated reader, giving some basic info and background on the stories that have shaped our literature and history. She doesn’t just tell the story, but gives enough background to it to help you understand its meaning, and why it may have been used as it has been. So she turns on a light bulb to illuminate a range of cultural basics — Shakespeare, Rembrandt, Milton, Spenser, Jacob Epstein, Wilfred Owen, William Blake, Tennyson, Oscar Wilde, yea even Monty Python… and hundreds of others.

So, here is an ideal present for the sixth former in your life who seeks some background to our culture. Its clarity and sense of perspective may also help the busy preacher…

A review from Paul Fromont at Prodigal Kiwis

There are many so-called “introductions” to the Bible, but Maggi’s book is a creative attempt to help readers engage the Bible from a different range of perspectives, those derived from art (a “catch all” term that includes paintings, music, and literature) and popular culture.

In re-imagining and re-engaging the bible from these perspectives, Maggi’s book does its likely many readers a wonderful service, especially if those readers may have heard significant stories (.e.g. the Creation account, or the Fall etc) from the Bible, but never engaged or read them from within their own everyday contexts – contexts woven through with the ‘threads’ of art, literature, film and music – whether contemporary or not.

New life is therefore breathed into the significant and important stories of the Bible, and hopefully a new readership will be brought into conversation with the narrative flow and drama of its stories, finding within its pages the invitations that all good stories offer; invitations to discover wisdom, to engage mystery, to discover grounds for new hope, to embrace the means by which new life can be experienced, and to search for new understanding in relation to what it means to be fully human and fully alive.

Maggi is a gifted, skilled, and disciplined writer and I highly recommend all of her published essays and books, but in particular this new book (because it’s her latest). Reading it will be a fruitful experience whether you read the Bible, think you know its stories, or have never read it before. It’s the kind of adventure we all need from time-to-time, and Maggi’s book is just the kind of accompanying friend we need. Read The Writing on the Wall – alongside Google – and the reading experience, like any good tour, will be enriched by seeing the sites as well.