No Other Life

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‘In this explosive book Moore brings a world pulsating to life, with vivid descriptive writing and a series of beautifully accurate vignettes' - Financial Times

‘Tightly-made and absorbing. Brian Moore is a highly intelligent writer who has the enviable ability to make you want to go on turning the pages... this is a very exciting book' - A. N. Wilson, Evening Standard

‘The profundity of this book is achieved with breathtaking lightness... Moore can push the reader's mind against its own extremities' - Guardian
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When Father Paul Michel, a missionary on the desperately poor Caribbean island of Ganae, plucks a black child from abject poverty, he does not expect the boy to become a charismatic Catholic priest and outspoken revolutionary. Jeannot, as Father Paul calls him, is a messianic orator who bravely urges his black brethren to rise against their oppressors. At odds with the Vatican in Rome, he is expelled from his order only to emerge as the first democratically elected president of the volatile Ganae.

Antagonising the mulatto elite and the ruling military junta, Jeannot discovers his enemies will stop at nothing - assassination, arson, brutal repression - to destroy him. Even Father Paul, who tells this story, is unsure whether Jeannot is saint or tyrant. In this deeply unsettling novel, Brian Moore weighs immortal souls against mortal misery.
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‘Poised, bracing and moving... if pleasure indeed corrupts the soul, then this very novel is a twenty-four carat sin' - Independent