An Infinity of Little Hours : Five Young Men and Their Trial of Faith in the Western World's Most Austere Monastic Order Paperback / softback

In 1960, five young men arrived at the imposing gates of Parkminster, the largest centre of the most rigorous and ascetic monastic order in the Western world: the Carthusians.

This is the story of their five-year journey into a society virtually unchanged in its behaviour and lifestyle since its foundation in 1084. An Infinity of Little Hours is a uniquely intimate portrait of the customs and practices of a monastic order almost entirely unknown until now.

It is also a drama of the men's struggle as they avoid the 1960s,the decade of hedonism, music, fashion, and amorality,and enter an entirely different era and a spiritual world of their own making.

After five years each must face a choice: to make "solemn profession" and never leave Parkminster or to turn his back on his life's ambition to find God in solitude.

A remarkable investigative work, the book combines first-hand testimony with unique source material to describe the Carthusian life. And in the final chapter, which recounts a reunion forty years after the events described elsewhere in the book, Nancy Klein Maguire reveals which of the five succeeded in their quest, and which did not.