Philip Hart, a fortysomething Norfolk school teacher, has sought solace in drink as he sees his life start to unravel. He suspects, with good reason, he is about to lose out on a promotion to a younger colleague who is assumed to be sleeping with his wife. And one night, driving home drunk from a village pub, he knocks down and kills an old man fleeing from a nearby mental hospital.To avoid blame Hart hides the body in a roadside culvert, but guilt forces him to learn the identity and background of his victim, so he can make some kind of amends. On a visit to the mental hospital he discovers clues to a decades-old mystery somehow involving the inmate, prompting him to sever all ties with his previously cloistered existence.
Adopting the role of Percival, the holy fool of legend charged with finding a redeeming relic, Hart-s journey takes him very far from Norfolk, into Sweden-s sub-arctic wilderness and to one of the continent-s forbidden places. And also back to th
