How do contemporary writers of fiction engage with spiritual questions?

The Emmaus Readers—an eclectic multi-disciplinary group of book-lovers at Calvin College in Michigan—have again set out to find what is implicitly and explicitly spiritual in the fiction that frequents the bestsellers lists. Choosing novels of historical fiction, fantasy, graphic novels, realism, science fiction, and mystery—they probe, guide, question, and point—and so show ways in which readers might approach fiction from within the contexts established by their own faith. They write to you as fellow readers, walking along the same road to Emmaus, hoping to have eyes opened in ways none of us, perhaps, could have anticipated.

"The pieces that you are about to read represent the thoughts, musings, observations of a group of readers like yourself, interested in the ways in which contemporary writers of fiction engage with the most significant spiritual questions and press us as readers to think seriously about how their art goes about that engagement…. they are guides to thinking about these novels with spiritual eyes—meaning that they try to draw out the ways in which writers are confronting readers with the deepest matters of the spirit."

Leila Aboulela, The Translator
Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner
Mischa Berlinski, Fieldwork
Edward P. Jones, The Known World
Geraldine Brooks, March
Cormac McCarthy, The Road
Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policemen's Union
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Purple Hibiscus
Kate DiCamillo, The Tale of Despereaux
Marilynne Robinson, Gilead
Allegra Goodman, Intuition
José Saramago, Blindness