NOW A PENGUIN MODERN CLASSIC: In this celebrated novel, Margaret Laurence writes with grace, power, and deep compassion about Rachel Cameron, a woman struggling to come to terms with love, with death, with herself and her world.

Living alone with only her aging mother for company, thirty-something retiring schoolteacher Rachel Cameron feels trapped in a milieu of deceit and pettiness--her own and that of others. She longs for love and contact with another human being who shares her rebellious spirit, and when she has a summer affair with former schoolmate Nick Kazlik, she learns at last to reach out to another person and to make herself vulnerable. Poignant and singular, A Jest of God is an enduring work by one of the world's most distinguished authors.

Margaret Laurence was born in 1926 in Neepawa, Manitoba. She published her first novel, This Side of Jordan (one of several works to be set in Africa), in 1960. The Stone Angel, published in 1964, was her second novel. It was an immediate success, as were her four subsequent Manawaka novels: A Jest of God (which won the 1967 Governor General's Award and was later made into the film Rachel, Rachel), The Fire Dwellers, A Bird in the House, and The Diviners — winner of the 1974 Governor General's Award. In 1971, Laurence was made a Companion of the Order of Canada. Remembered also as a peace activist, she died in 1987.

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“Fresh and arresting…unforgettably good and nothing less than brilliant.”
–Maclean’s

“Superb and movingly human.”
–Saturday Review