Publisher's Synopsis
In a time of markedly increasing tension between the values and politics of a predominantly Christian West and Muslim Middle-East, Dr Rio Dawson, a paper conservator working in the Chester Beatty Library museum in Dublin, unearths a document which suggests that a book, long thought destroyed, still exists. The book is the kitab al-dhikr al-Ruh, an unique and very early commentary on the Qur' an which is thought to detail the Prophet Mohammed's concept of al-Ruh, or Messenger Spirit and of the similarities, rather than differences, between Christianity and early Islam. Rio recognises the explosive potential of this book and enlists the help of Jerome Augustus Flanagan, a former curator in the Museum and now a freelance expert in sourcing rare manuscripts. He agrees, reluctantly, but before he has a chance to begin there is a break-in at the museum, and a member of staff dies. The recently discovered document disappears and Flanagan and Rio embark on a quest that is soon rendered by passion, deception, danger and unfolding personal tragedy.;In an insightful, timely and tautly worked novel by the author of the Simurgh and the Nightingale and When Twilight Comes, set against the backdrop of Dublin and Istanbul and a unravelling modern world of intense political and religious differences, the deeply intimate philosophical and practical fundamentalism of being, of breathing, of living is continuously contrasted with the alternative of not being at all...
