One of the few writers still willing to explore moral and spiritual questions in fiction talks to Peter Stanford about the religious novel and about his latest work, published this month In tandem with the marginalisation that has been seen elsewhere – most recently with the BBC dispensing with a commissioning editor for religion – novels that take the soul as seriously as the head and the heart are now a neglected sub-genre at small publishing houses.In a recent Tablet column, I invited readers to nominate their favourite writers on religion over the past decade. The name that came up most often was that of Michael Arditti, a devout Anglican who, since his first novel The Celibate in 1993, has been one of those rare voices addressing religion in the public square of the book