The Mission Song.

JOHN le CARRE

Publication: Hodder and Stoughton, 2006, London

First edition. 8vo. Signed by the author. on the title page. As new, unread copy in dust jacket. 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 secret sons of Rome, Salvo is inspired by his mentor Brother Michael to train as a professional interpreter in the tribal dialects of Africa. Soon a rising star in his profession, he is brought into the mushrooming overworld of British Intelligence. At the same time, he is 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. 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 re-awakened African conscience.