"The introduction provides a brief outline of the main questions and ideas of the book, including the question of the possible role ancient traditions of mystical darkness can play in us grapple with and respond deeply and honestly to our own losses and darknesses? And whether our understanding of these mystical traditions of darkness and unknowing can be deepened by reading and thinking about them in light of our own dislocations and losses? It also describes the dialogical character of the book, in which questions about the meaning of darkness and unknowing and emptiness draw at once on mystical texts from apophatic mystical traditions and on voices of darkess and unknowing arising in contemporary literature, poetry and film. And it describes how the ideas and language of spirituality, mysticism and contemplative practice are employed in the book and what it means to retrieve and reinterpret them in light of the widespread experience of loss"--