Full of politics, heart, and the sort of suspense that nobody in the world does better, The Mission Song turns John Le Carre's laser eye for the complexity of the modern world on turmoil and conspiracy in Africa. Abandoned by both his Irish father and Congolese mother, Bruno Salvador has long looked for someone to guide his life. He has found it in Mr. Anderson of British Intelligence. Bruno's African upbringing, and fluency in numerous African languages, has made him a top interpreter in London, useful to businesses, hospitals, diplomats -- and spies. Working for Anderson in a clandestine facility known as the "Chat Room,"Salvo (as he's known) translates intercepted phone calls, bugged recordings, and snatched voice mail messages. When Anderson sends him to a mysterious island to interpret during a secret conference between Central African warlords, Bruno thinks he is helping Britain bring peace to a bloody corner of the world. But then he hears something he should not have... By turns thriller, love story, and comic allegory of our times, The Mission Song is a crowning achievement, recounting an interpreter's heroically naive journey out of the dark of Western hypocrisy and into the heart of lightness.

"Gripping and moving. . . . A marvelous return to the John le Carre of old, with all the captivating characters, finely rendered landscapes, and messy complexities that have always powered his best work." -San Francisco Chronicle Hailed everywhere as a masterpiece of suspense, John le Carre's return to Africa is the story of Bruno Salvador (aka Salvo), the 25-year-old orphaned love child of an Irish missionary and a Congolese woman. Quickly rising to the top of his profession as an interpreter, Salvo is dispatched by British Intelligence to a top-secret meeting between Western financiers and East Congolese warlords, where he hears things not intended for his ears--and is forced to interpret matters never intended for his reawoken African conscience. By turns 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. "Entertaining... Salvo may be the author's most naive creation to date, but he is also one of the most fascinating and engaging... The atmosphere of intrigue builds nicely and convincingly."-Baltimore Sun "An incendiary tale... Le Carre's understanding of how the world ticks is, as always, machete sharp." -USA TODAY "To categorize Le Carre, as many do, as a 'spy' novelist is to do him a disservice; he uses the world of cloak-and-dagger much as Conrad used the sea--to explore the dark places in human nature.' -Washington Post Book World "Le Carre's insight into the dense, dangerous nexus of corporate and government interests is chillingly assured." -New York Times Book Review "Engaging, masterfully told... The Mission Song offers an emotional resonance that stays with a reader long after the book is done." -Cleveland Plain Dealer

In the spring of 1836, eighteen-year-old Chenoa Sandoval escapes the suffocating Mt. Saint Dominic Convent in Boston and sails around the tip of South America to the wild land of her birth, Carmel, Alta California. Chenoa is determined to honor the memory of Padre Tomas, Mission San Carlos Borromeo's last executor, who was also her adopted father. She will teach the Indian children born the years she was in the convent. Only her guardian, Don Sebastian Viandante, stands in her way.