The Blasphemer »

NIGEL FARNDALE is the author of Haw-Haw: The Tragedy of William and Margaret Joyce, which was shortlisted for the 2005 Whitbread Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

On its way to the Galápagos Islands, a light aircraft ditches into the sea. As water floods the cabin, zoologist Daniel Kennedy faces an im­possible choice—should he save himself, or Nancy, the woman he loves and the mother of his child?

Back in London, Daniel can’t stop thinking about the man he saw while swimming fourteen miles—on the verge of exhaustion and hypothermia—to reach the islands: a smiling figure treading water, urging him to swim just a few strokes farther until his foot touched sand. An adamant atheist, Daniel is certain it was merely a hallucination brought on by his physical state. Or was it?
 
Meanwhile, in a parallel narrative, Daniel’s great-grandfather, Andrew Kennedy, faces mortal danger during the horrific battle of Passchendaele. But what does the unraveling truth about the life and death of Andrew have to do with Daniel? As secrets are disclosed—from the diary of a military chaplain who knew Andrew and from the enigmatic scribbles on a musical score signed by Gustav Mahler—Daniel must confront the miraculous, despite his atheism. In doing so, he is given another fateful chance to prove his unconditional love to his family.

A literary thriller of rare depth that sweeps from the morbid trenches of World War I to the terrorist-besieged streets of present-day London, The Blasphemer is about one man coming to grips with his darkest instincts, his moments of betrayal, his shocking family legacy, and ultimately his desperate hope for redemption and faith.

Publishers Weekly

In British author Farndale's elegant meditation on morality (among many other topics), Daniel Kennedy, a biologist specializing in worms, is convinced that the universe is godless--until the plane carrying him and his partner, Nancy, to the Galapagos Islands crashes in the ocean. In his desperate scramble to escape the sinking plane, he pushes Nancy out of the way, though he later returns to rescue her. While the primary plot concerns Daniel and Nancy's efforts to come to terms with their near-death experience, as well as Daniel's betrayal, which Nancy can neither forget nor forgive, this ambitious novel interweaves several other narratives, one involving Daniel's grandfather in WWI (the author brilliantly evokes trench warfare), and another focused on what may be an original manuscript of part of Mahler's "unfinished" symphony. A third subplot focuses on the couple's nine-year-old daughter and her music teacher, a Muslim, in London. Farndale (A Sympathetic Hanging) can be didactic, but he knows how to tell a terrific story. (Aug.)