BRUNO SALVADOR, known to friends and enemies Mike as Salvo, is the ever-innocent twenty-nine-year-old orphaned love child of a Catholic Irish missionary and a Congolese woman. Educated first at a 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 London corporations, hospitals, law firms, the immigration services; and--inevitably--the mushrooming overworld of British Intelligence. He is also courted--and won--by Penelope, a white upper-class star reporter on one of the 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.

HAILED EVERYWHERE as a masterpiece of suspense,The Mission Song tells the story of Bruno Salvador (aka Salvo), the twenty-five-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 where he must interpret matters never intended for his ears. By turns thriller, love story, and comic allegory of our times, The Mission Song recounts Salvo's journey out of the dark of Western hypocrisy and into the heart of lightness.