Amazon.com description: Product Description: A novel of extraordinary brilliance and insight into the human condition, published in paper for the first time, along with its companion novel, The Pillar of Cloud. The plot centers on an Irish soldier who returns to a sleepy Irish town, bringing with him the intimations of the agony he left behind. Gradually his presence unsettles the pieties of village life and this leads to havoc, cruelty, and murder. ""In its beauty and terror...Redemption has given me at sixty-six the kind of thrill Dostoevsky used to give me at sixteen."" - Compton MacKenzie.