Five nuns confront nature--physical and human--in a remote Himalayan
convent in the bestselling novel that inspired the new FX miniseries.
Under the guidance of Sister Clodagh, the youngest Mother Superior in
the history of their order, five European Sisters of the Servants of
Mary leave their monastery in Darjeeling, India, and make their way to
remote Mopu in the foothills of the Himalayan Mountains. There, in the
opulent, abandoned palace where an Indian general housed his harem, the
holy sisters hope to establish a school and a health clinic. Their aim
is to help combat superstition, ignorance, and disease among the
mistrusting natives in the village below, and to silence the doubts of
their royal benefactor's agent, the hard-drinking and somewhat
disreputable Mr. Dean.
But all too soon, the isolation, the ghosts and lurid history, and the
literally breathtaking beauty of this high, lonely place in the Asian
mountains begin to take a serious toll on Sister Clodagh and her fellow
nuns. And their burdens may prove too heavy to bear, exposing a
vulnerable humanity that threatens to undermine the best intentions of
the purest hearts.
The basis for the Golden Globe and Academy Award-winning motion picture
starring Deborah Kerr, as well as the new miniseries on FX starring
Gemma Arterton, Black Narcissus has been universally praised for its
poignancy, passion, and rich evocation of a time and place. An intensely
human story of devotion, faith, and madness, this beloved novel by the
New York Times-bestselling author of In This House of Brede stands
among the finest fiction written in the twentieth century.
"Bears comparison with A Passage to India." --Arthur Koestler
