The Sunday Times (London) 2020 Novel of the Year
"Luminous...a writer to watch--and to savor." --Oprah Daily
From the award-winning author of West and The Redemption of Galen
Pike, a "sublime" (The Toronto Star) and propulsive novel that
follows an Englishman seeking refuge in a remote hill town in India who
gets caught in the crossfire of local tensions.
In this "jewel of a novel" (The Observer), Hilary Byrd flees his
demons and the dark undercurrents of contemporary life in England for a
former British hill station in south India. Charmed by the foreignness
of his new surroundings and by the familiarity of everything the British
have left behind, he finds solace in life's simple pleasures, travelling
by rickshaw around the small town with his driver Jamshed and staying in
a mission house beside the local presbytery where, after a chance
meeting, the Padre and his adoptive daughter Priscilla take Hilary under
their wing.
The Padre is concerned for Priscilla's future, and as Hilary's
friendship with the young woman grows, he begins to wonder whether his
purpose lies in this new relationship. But religious tensions are
brewing and the mission house may not be the safe haven it seems.
A "skillful drama of well-meant misunderstandings and cultural
divisions" (The Wall Street Journal**)**, The Mission House boldly
and imaginatively explores postcolonial ideas in a world fractured
between faith and nonbelief, young and old, imperial past and
nationalistic present. Tenderly subversive and meticulously crafted, it
is a deeply human story of the wonders and terrors of connection in a
modern world.
