Hawke’s roles have ranged from the born skeptics of “Reality Bites” and “Before Sunrise” to the violently committed John Brown, the 19th century abolitionist whom he plays in the Showtime adaptation of James McBride’s prize-winning novel “The Good Lord Bird.” The Rev. “Her humility as a person, and the depth of her writing, was inspiring - so I started reading,” he explained. In a recent email, Hawke remembered his first encounter with Robinson, when she read from “Gilead” at Shakespeare and Company in Paris, as a “near Holy experience.” ‘Gilead’ is a great American novel, and Ethan Hawke is a great American actor.” “I read that and think of Ethan Hawke’s voice.

“In ‘Gilead,’ the Reverend John Ames contemplates ‘grace as a sort of ecstatic fire that takes things down to essentials,’” he said. 19-29 via Bernard Schwartz, who directs the Y’s Unterberg Poetry Center, said in a statement that he thought Hawke was an ideal narrator. Hawke has recorded an abridged narrative of “Gilead” that was commissioned by Manhattan’s 92nd Street Y and can he heard Oct. John Ames, a Congregationalist pastor who reflects on his family history and the suffering and transcendence he has known in this “poor perishable world.” The book’s many admirers include former President Barack Obama, who has spoken of reading “Gilead” while campaigning in Iowa. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 2005, ”Gilead” is the first of four Robinson novels set in a rural Iowa community in the 1950s. “He (Hawke) speaks in a sort of American way that is well within the range of what I understand my character to be speaking,” she said.

Gilead book