The Woman Who Was Poor: A Novel

Written in the 1890s, Leon Bloy's masterful novel has had an immeasurable effect on all European Catholic writing since. (Bloy was responsible for the conversion of Jacques and Räissa Maritain in 1905, and they referred to him as their godfather.) It is an extraordinary book, powerful in the manner of dos Passos, and yet spiritual in the manner of the Bible.

It is the story of a woman who is abysmally poor, brutally treated and exploited by her parents, living in the gutters of Paris, yet...