How or why this music is broadcast is never clearly explained, but then very little is explained in The Sparrow. Only this time the New World is literally a new world, another planet setįour light years away in Alpha Centauri whose inhabitants attract the interest of Earth by broadcasting their hauntingly beautiful, quasi-religious music into space. Mirrors the greater story of Western Civilisation from the dawn of the New World

The small and personal story of polyglot Jesuit missionary Emilio Sandoz There's a tastefully blurred montage on the front of a sparrow set against a nebula in a night sky and the book is issued in B format under Transworld's literary Black Swan imprint. It certainly isn't packaged as SF, at least not in the UK market. There are books born to win prizes and this is one of them. The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell (Black Swan, £6.99, paperback, 1998. of society, phenomena (tech), places 26.Mary Doria Russell: The Sparrow - an infinity plus review of chases or violence 10% planning/preparing, gather info, debate puzzles/motives 23.3% Feelings, relationships, character bio/development 40% Descript. The author, born a Catholic and converted to Judaism, and possessor of advanced degrees in cultural, social, and biological anthropology, brings her entire past and education to bear in this highly intelligent, witty, and deeply moving story about faith, doubt, and the fatal errors of ethnocentrism on a stellar scale.Ĭlick here to see the rest of this reviewĬlick on a plot link to find similar books! Plot & Themes Composition of Book Descript.

_The Sparrow_ travels between the questioning his superiors put him through, his early service in his native Puerto Rico (around 2014-15), and the expedition itself (circa 2039), which included three other priests, a young astronomer, a physician, her engineer husband, and a former child prostitute turned computer expert and pilot. The press has a field day because Father Sandoz apparently was found in a brothel and he killed a little alien girl the day of his discovery on Rakhat. The expedition was cosponsored and financed by the Jesuits, and the order tucks him away in a hospital and then a spiritual retreat.

In 2060, the sole survivor of an 8-person expedition to Rakhat, a planet in the Alpha Centauri system, returns to Earth.

The sparrow mary doria russell summary