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The Mission House Audiobook
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Publisher Description
The Sunday Times (London) 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.
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“[Davies has] triumphed again…Subtle with nuance and alive with immediacy…A masterly achievement.”
— Sunday Times (London)
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About Carys Davies
Carys Davies is the author of three novels and two short-story collections. Her debut novel West was named the Wales Book of the Year for Fiction, was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize, and was runner-up for the Society of Authors’ McKitterick Prize. Her novel The Mission House was a Sunday Times (London) 2020 Novel of the Year. Her short story collection, The Redemption of Galen Pike, won the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize. Her other awards include the Royal Society of Literature’s V. S. Pritchett Prize, the Society of Authors’ Olive Cook Short Story Award, and a Cullman Fellowship at the New York Public Library. Born in Wales, she lived and worked for twelve years in New York and Chicago, and now lives in Edinburgh.
About James Langton
James Langton, an Earphones Award–winning narrator, trained as an actor at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and later as a musician at the Guildhall School in London. He has worked in radio, film, and television, also appearing in theater in England and on Broadway. He is also a professional musician who led the internationally renowned Pasadena Roof Orchestra from 1996 to 2002.