About the book

A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr. (1959) is a classic of science fiction. Set in a desert monastery over many centuries after a nuclear war, it follows an order of monks who preserve scraps of scientific knowledge through a new dark age, waiting for civilisation to rise again, and then to repeat its mistakes. Told in three parts spanning roughly 1,800 years, it is a meditation on the cyclical nature of history, the tension between faith and science, and whether humanity can ever escape its own capacity for self-destruction. It won the 1961 Hugo Award and has never been out of print.