A brilliant portrait of a beloved and

controversial
figure in twentieth-century spirituality.

Simone Weil (1906-1943) was a writer and

philosopher who devoted her life to a search for

God-while avoiding membership in organized religion. She

wrote with the clarity of a brilliant mind educated in the best

French schools, the social conscience of a grass-roots labor

organizer, and the certainty and humility of a mystic-and

she persistently carried out her search in the company of the

poor and oppressed.

Robert Coles’s study of this strange and

compelling figure includes the details of her short, eventful

life: her academic career, her teaching, her political and

social activism, and her mystical experiences. Coles also

analyzes the major themes her life encompassed: her politics,

her Jewish identity, her moral concerns, her intellect, and her

experience of grace. This is the best, most accessible

introduction to the woman who was a spiritual influence on the

life and work of so many, among them T. S. Eliot, Flannery

O'Connor, Adrienne Rich, and Albert Camus.

Robert Coles, M.D., was awarded the

Pulitzer Prize for his five-volume Children of Crisis series.

He is Professor of Psychiatry and Medical Humanities at Harvard

Medical School and the James Agee Professor of Social Ethics at

Harvard University, and is the author of many books, including The Spiritual Life of Children, The Moral Life

of Children, and Dorothy Day: A Radical Devotion.