Two men want to kill each other over God. That is the absurd, magnificent premise of Chesterton's 1909 novel, and it unfolds with the kind of glorious insanity only this writer could pull off. Evan MacIan, a Jacobite Catholic with a sword and absolute certainty, and James Turnbull, an atheist socialist with a newspaper and equally absolute certainty, meet in a moonlit garden and immediately determine to duel to the death over the existence of God. But here is the twist that makes the novel sing: the entire modern world conspires to stop them. Police arrest them, doctors hospitalize them, friends intervene, trains fail to run, and the dull machinery of polite society does everything in its power to prevent two men from fighting over something as embarrassing as religion. As MacIan and Turnbull chase each other across England in increasingly farcical circumstances, something unexpected happens. Their shared obsessions bind them together. They become friends. The Ball and the Cross is Chesterton at his best: laughing at the absurd certainty of ideologues while taking absolutely seriously the questions they pose.
