Beschrijving

A Trilogy on Awakening in the World of the Vatican in the Latter 20th Century. . . LOST SONS is the entire life stories of two rivals with fiercely opposing views and a third man, an intellectually-gifted and wise African who acts as their mediator. The three meet in a Catholic seminary in Ireland in 1960 and the rivals lock horns on almost everything: communism and capitalism; church teaching and spirituality; sex and humour; Northern Ireland politics and the IRA. Their diverse childhood experiences of abuse … sexual abuse, alcoholic abuse and racial abuse … contribute to their differences, and this disparity culminates in Book One in three distinct clashes: first, in the seminary, and years later in Sharpeville Township near Johannesburg, and then high in the Drakensberg Mountains of Southern Africa. The involvement of members of the Roman Catholic Church with right-wing dictators and governments in Africa, Latin America and the USA and in radical left-wing movements for socio-economic reform is very much the basis of the drama. The theme is forgiveness. Whilst the three characters are totally fictitious their actions are held to be entirely probable by many leading historians and journalists. The novel may thus be seen as ‘faction’, a combination of fact and fiction, to raise questions not open to historians. Readers may well be shocked not only at the characters’ addictions to sex, alcohol and self-inflicted pain, but also and especially at their involvement in murder, torture and terror on behalf of opposed Cold War factions and Catholic dogma. ‘With its poetic prose and richly-layered characters, this unforgettable novel which is rooted in historical probability, pulls us inexorably through some of the defining moments of our time.’ ‘Thank you for the opportunity to copy edit this manuscript. I found it beautifully written, well structured, and an overall thought-provoking and absorbing read…Congratulations, and I wish you great success ‘