I. the Loss of Faith.- I. Modern Literature and the Death of God.- II. God and the Alienated Self.- 1. The Loss of Faith.- 2. The Kafka Universe.- 3. Andre Gide and the Gratuitous Act.- 4. Modern Man in Search of his Lost Self.- 5. The Absurd Self.- 6. The Flight from Self in the World of Samuel Beckett.- III. Eros and the Death of God.- II. the Search for God.- IV. Kierkegaard and Nietzsche.- 1. Existentialism in Extremis.- 2. The Aesthetics of Nihilism.- V. Dostoevski and the Problem of Religion.- VI. The Literature of Suicide.- VII. The Numinous in Fiction.- VIII. Religion and the Novel.- 1. The Dialectic of Belief and Expression.- 2. The Secular Novelist and the Religion Problem.- IX. Catholicism in Fiction.- X. The Dialectics of Tragedy in an Age of Unfaith.- 1. The Negative Conditions.- 2. The Christian Mythos and the Tragic Resolution.- III. the Summing up.- XI. Conclusion.