What happens to a culture that keeps the symbols of Christianity but forgets what they mean? A new Catholic novel set in 18th-century China asks a question the post-Christian West can't avoid.

Katherine Bennett talks with author Roy Peachey about The Garden of Perfect Clarity (Os Justi Press). Inspired by the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci and his memory palace, it follows an English boy cast into a land that has forgotten the faith once planted there, from the 18th century to the 20th.

Roy answers our book club's questions: what he borrowed from Dickens's Great Expectations and C.S. Lewis's Till We Have Faces, what the puppets and kites stand for, why the book names no people or places, and the statue of Our Lady at its heart. At 35:29 he answers the big one: is the novel a warning to the West? He closes with a reading from chapter 46.

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Chapters
00:00 Welcome & introducing Roy Peachey
00:32 What inspired the novel
02:45 What the book is about (no spoilers)
05:51 The Jesuits in China & the row over Chinese rites
08:18 Is the garden only for Christians?
10:42 Borrowing from Dickens: Great Expectations in China
11:57 What kind of novel is it?
14:58 Stories that stay with you after the last page
17:03 The C.S. Lewis influence: Till We Have Faces
17:59 The mother's shocking final act (spoiler)
20:27 What the puppets stand for
22:44 Puppets vs kites: the book's two images
24:12 Why the novel names no people or places
26:33 The statue of Our Lady at the heart of the book
29:13 Why the hero is called Aitchison
32:28 A hero swept along by history
35:29 Is the novel a warning to the post-Christian West?
38:46 Roy reads from chapter 46
43:46 Final thoughts & where to get the book