Book description
The Reverend Timothy Fortune, ex-clerk of the Hornsey Branch of Lloyds
Bank, has spent ten years as a South Seas Island missionary when a
'maggot' impels him to embark on what he describes as a 'sort of pious
escapade' - an assignment to the even more remote island of Fanua, where
a white man is a rarity. Mr Fortune is a good man, humble, earnest - he
wishes to bring the joys of Christianity to the innocent heathen. But in
his three years on Fanua he makes only one convert - the boy Lueli, who
loves him. This love, and the sensuous freedom of the islanders produces
in Mr Fortune a change of heart which is shattering... Beautifully
imagined, the paradise island and its people are as vivid as a Gauguin
painting. Told with the driest of wise humour, touching and droll by
turns, its theme - that we can never love anything without messing it
about - is only one of the delights of this enchanting book. Born in
Harrow (1893-1978), Sylvia Townsend Warner published seven novels, four
volumes of poetry, a volume of essays and eight volumes of short
stories. She lived most of her adult life with her close companion
Valentine Ackland in Dorset and Norfolk.
