Book description
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 minority African languages of which, almost from birth, he has
been an obsessive collector.
Soon a rising star in his profession, he is courted by City
corporations, hospitals, law courts, the Immigration services and -
inevitably - the mushrooming overworld of British Intelligence. He is
also 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. Yet even as the story opens, a
contrary and irresistible love is dawning in him.
Despatched 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-awoken African conscience.
