The basis for Powell & Pressburger's Academy Award-winning 1947 film, Rumer Godden's much-admired classic novel tells the story of a sisterhood of nuns on a mission in Himalayan India.

An essay on the nature of human revolt, this book makes a critique of communism, how it had gone wrong behind the Iron Curtain, and the resulting totalitarian regimes. It also questions two events held sacred by the left wing, the French Revolution of 1789 and the Russian Revolution of 1917.