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Author: Godden, Rumer

Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)

Published on 13 February 2025 by Little, Brown Book Group (Virago Press Ltd) in the United Kingdom as part of ‘the Virago Modern Classics’ series.

Paperback | 272 pages
126 x 198 x 21 | 220g

BY THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF BLACK NARCISSUS AND THE RIVER ‘One of our best and most captivating novelists’ PHILIP HENSHER ‘Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy is about growth, choice, struggle, and the freedom of the soul’ JOAN CHITTISTER ‘[Godden’s] distinctive, poised and unsentimental books have never lost a shred of their almost hypnotic appeal’ ROSIE THOMAS, GUARDIAN The Sisters of Béthanie, a French order of Dominican nuns, dedicate themselves to caring for the outcasts of society – criminals, prostitutes and drug addicts. Lise, an English girl who after the liberation of Paris was employed in one of the city’s smartest brothels and rose to become a successful madame, finds herself joining the sisters. An inspiring and entirely convincing conversion story that shows how the mercy of God extends to the darkest human places.

Master storyteller, Rumer Godden, weaves a deeply moving tale of Lise’s prison sentence, her conversion and the agonising work among women whose traumatic experiences often outstrip even her own.