The Seven Storey Mountain is the 1948 autobiography of Thomas Merton, an American Trappist monk and priest who was a noted author in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. Merton finished the book in 1946 at the age of 31, five years after entering Gethsemani Abbey near Bardstown, Kentucky. The title refers to the mountain of purgatory from Dante's Purgatorio. Apart from being on the National Review's list of the 100 best non-fiction books of the century, it was also mentioned in 100 Christian Books That Changed the Century (2000) by William J. Petersen.