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Synopsis

From the No1 Bestselling Author

Bruno Salvador, known to friends and enemies alike as Salvo, is the ever-innocent, twenty-nine-year-old orphaned love-child of a Catholic Irish missionary and a Congolese headman's daughter. Educated first at mission school in the East Congolese province of Kivu and later at a discreet sanctuary for the secert sones of Rome. Salvo is inspired by his mentor Brother Michael to train as a professional interpreter in the minority African languages which, almost from birth, he has been an obsessive collector.

Soon a rising star in his profession, he is courted by City coprorations, hospitals, law courts, the Immigration services and - inevitably - the mushrooming overworld of British Intelligence. He is also courted - and won - by the all-white, Surrey-born Penelope, star reporter on one of our great national newspapers, whom with typical impulsiveness he promptly marries. Yet even as the story opens, a contrary and irresistable love is dawning in him.

Dispatched to a no-name island in the North Sea to attend a top-secret meeting between Western financiers and East Congolese warlords, Salvo is obliged to interpret matters never intended for his reawakened African conscience.

By turn thriller, love story and comic allegory of our times, The Mission Song recounts Salvo's heroically naive journey out of the dark of Western hypocrisy and into the heart of lightness.

About the Author

John le Carre was born in 1931. His third novel, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, secured him a wide reputation, which was consolidated by the acclaim for his trilogy, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley's People. His recent novels include The Tailor of Panama, The Constant Gardener and Absolute Friends. The Mission Song is his twentieth novel.