Sanctuary: On Shelter and Story

Drawing on literature, myth, history, and tradition from different cultures, Marina Warner offers “a dazzling meditation on the idea of home, hospitality, and refuge” in our world of global turmoil (The Observer, UK).

Sanctuary is an ancient right—a haven, a place of refuge and freedom from harm. In the classical world, it offered immunity to fugitives from justice; in medieval Europe it extended a reprieve to all who sought sanctuary in a church or holy site. It was a sacrilege to lay hands on a sanctuary-seeker: sanctuary was sacred.

Increasingly, in keeping with the general growth of nationalism and individualism, the meaning of sanctuary has been moving away from a place of openness and welcome, and toward a private safe place, a redoubt: home and homeland as sanctuaries to be defended against strangers, migrants, incomers.

In an age defined by migration of many kinds, could a revived practice of sanctuary offer a home for those who seek it? In her groundbreaking book, cultural historian Marina Warner journeys across myth and history to explore the principles undergirding the tradition of sanctuary.

Examining the legends of Saint Helena, Turandot, Dido, and others alongside contemporary migration narratives, Warner argues that the act of storytelling offers a salve, a route to a site of mutual interaction and understanding, a new place of belonging and conviviality. An ambitious attempt to grapple with the sharpest questions of our day, Warner’s book could not be more timely.