The Hammer of God: A Novel about the Cure of Souls by Bo Giertz was first published in 1941 in Swedish as Stengrunden ("The Stone Foundation"). It has been translated into English in 1960, 1973 and 2005. The English-language title derives from the first part of the book, Herrens hammare ("The Hammer of the Lord").
It was filmed in 2007 and is available with Swedish and English subtitles.
Munkar and Nakir in Islamic eschatology, are angels who test the faith of the dead in their graves.
In Christian theology, Charity is considered as one of the seven virtues and is understood by Thomas Aquinas as "the friendship of man for God", which "unites us to God". He holds it as "the most excellent of the virtues". Further, Aquinas holds that "the habit of charity extends not only to the love of God, but also to the love of our neighbor".
Henning Georg Mankell was a Swedish crime writer, children's author, and dramatist, best known for a series of mystery novels starring his most noted creation, Inspector Kurt Wallander. He also wrote a number of plays and screenplays for television.
In Germanic mythology, Thor is a hammer-wielding god associated with lightning, thunder, storms, sacred groves and trees, strength, the protection of mankind and also hallowing and fertility. Besides Old Norse Þórr, the deity occurs in Old English as Þunor, in Old Frisian as Thuner, in Old Saxon as Thunar, and in Old High German as Donar, all ultimately stemming from the Proto-Germanic language theonym *Þunraz, meaning 'thunder'.
Móric Jókay de Ásva, outside Hungary also known as Maurus Jokai or Mauritius Jókai, was a Hungarian nobleman, novelist, dramatist and revolutionary. He was active participant and a leading personality in the outbreak of Hungarian Liberal Revolution of 1848 in Pest. Jókai's romantic novels became very popular among the elite of Victorian era England; he was often compared to Dickens in the 19th century British press. One of his most famous fans and admirers was Queen Victoria herself.
Stig Halvard Dagerman was a Swedish journalist and writer. He was one of the most prominent Swedish authors writing in the aftermath of World War II, but his existential texts transcend time and place and continue to be widely published in Sweden and abroad.
Sir Christopher James Hampton is a Portuguese-born British playwright, screenwriter, translator and film director. He is best known for his play Les Liaisons Dangereuses based on the novel of the same name and the film adaptation. He has twice received the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, for Dangerous Liaisons (1988) and The Father (2020), and was also nominated for Atonement (2007).
Dark Night of the Soul is a poem written by the 16th-century Spanish mystic and poet St. John of the Cross. The author himself did not give any title to his poem, on which he wrote two book-length commentaries: Ascent of Mount Carmel and The Dark Night.
Johannes Tauler OP was a German mystic, a Roman Catholic priest and a theologian. A disciple of Meister Eckhart, he belonged to the Dominican order. Tauler was known as one of the most important Rhineland mystics. He promoted a certain neo-platonist dimension in the Dominican spirituality of his time.
Eva Elisabeth "Liza" Marklund is a Swedish journalist and crime writer.
Hamid Ismailov born May 5, 1954 in Tokmok, Kyrgyzstan, is an Uzbek journalist and writer who was forced to flee Uzbekistan in 1992 and came to the United Kingdom, where he took a job with the BBC World Service. He left the BBC on the 30 April, 2019 after 25 years of service. His works are banned in Uzbekistan.
In Christian theology, Hell is the place or state into which, by God's definitive judgment, unrepentant sinners pass in the general judgment, or, as some Christians believe, immediately after death. Its character is inferred from teaching in the biblical texts, some of which, interpreted literally, have given rise to the popular idea of Hell. Theologians today generally see Hell as the logical consequence of using free will to reject union with God and, because God will not force conformity, it is not incompatible with God's justice and mercy.
Bo Harald Giertz was a thrice-widowed Lutheran theologian, novelist and bishop of the Gothenburg Lutheran Diocese from 1949 to 1970. By the time he became bishop, he was already quite well known in Sweden and elsewhere both as an author and as a priest. He worked hard to promote western Swedish Pietism, an outlook that strongly resembled Neo-Lutheranism. Mostly it was a piety that took Scripture seriously, though not in a fundamentalist, literalist sense, and that centered Christian life on sacraments and prayer. Giertz's combination of pietist pastoral care with High Church Lutheran theology, which can also be noticed in his novels, gained for him a wide readership and made his novels as well as non-fiction books about Christian faith popular in Scandinavia. Giertz wrote more than 600 works but is known in the English-speaking world mostly for his book The Hammer of God.
Wilhelm Dichter is a Polish American writer and the author of three novels based on his life.
"How Great Thou Art" is a Christian hymn based on a Swedish traditional melody and a poem written by Carl Boberg (1859–1940) in Mönsterås, Sweden, in 1885. It was translated into German and then into Russian. It was translated into English from the Russian by English missionary Stuart K. Hine, who also added two original verses of his own. It was popularised by George Beverly Shea and Cliff Barrows during the Billy Graham crusades. It was voted the United Kingdom's favourite hymn by BBC's Songs of Praise. "How Great Thou Art" was ranked second on a list of the favourite hymns of all time in a survey by Christianity Today magazine in 2001.
Mare Kandre was a Swedish writer of Estonian descent. She was born on May 27, 1962 in Söderala, a small place in mid-Sweden and grew up in Gothenburg and Stockholm. Between 1967 and 1969, she lived with her family in British Columbia, Canada, a period which made a very deep impression on her and later in life influenced her writing. She died on 24 March 2005 of an unintentional prescription drug overdose, aged 42.
Soul Mountain is a novel by Gao Xingjian. The novel is loosely based on the author's own journey into rural China, which was inspired by a false diagnosis of lung cancer. The novel is a part autobiographical, part fictional account of a man's journey to find the fabled mountain Lingshan. It is a combination of story fragments, travel accounts, unnamed characters, and folk poetry/legends. An English version translated by Mabel Lee was published in the United States on December 5, 2000.
Selma Ottilia Lovisa Lagerlöf was a Swedish author and teacher. She published her first novel, Gösta Berling's Saga, at the age of 33. She was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, which she was awarded in 1909. Additionally, she was the first woman to be granted a membership in the Swedish Academy in 1914.
Mayyazhippuzhayude Theerangalil is a Malayalam language novel by M. Mukundan. Widely regarded as the author's magnum opus, the novel vividly describes the political and social background of Mahé (Mayyazhi), the former French colony, in the past, in a mystical way. The novel was translated into English and French, both the versions winning accolades.
Teji Grover is a Hindi poet, fiction writer, translator and painter. She is regarded as an important voice in Hindi poetry in the generations born after 1950. According to poet and critic Ashok Vajpeyi, "Teji Grover shapes her language away from the prevalent idiom of Hindi poetry. In her poetry language acquires a form which is unique..." Her poems have been translated into many Indian and foreign languages.