A flag for sunrise

A Flag for Sunrise is a novel of Americans drawn into the maelstrom of Tecan, a small Central American country on the brink of revolution. At a mission on the coast a priest is lapsing into alcoholic mysticism, while a young American nun is veering towards commitment to the cause. In a bar in Brooklyn, Frank Holliwell is lunching with an old CIA friend who is begging for a favour. On the Tex–Mex border, Pablo, a Coast Guard deserter, loco on speed, is about to take a job carrying mysterious contraband to Tecan. As these lives converge, as this small, crowded world erupts, the novel builds to an electrifying climax. ‘Hold on to your tricorn hat, or your cruciform, or your Uzi . . . Mr Stone kicks the brain around; we live in heresy; Satan prevails. A Flag for Sunrise is the best novel I’ve read since Dostoevsky escaped from Omsk’ New York Times ‘Destined to be one of the books that will justify our time at the bar of literary history’ New Republic ‘An ambitious adventure story about modern imperialism and modern morality . . . an action novel well garnished with scraps of wisdom and observation; Graham Greene and Hemingway are this book’s tutelary gods’ Sunday Times ‘Stone is his own man, indentured to nobody in his ability to play on our nerves . . it is now clear that Stone is the strongest novelist of the post-Vietnam era’ Newsweek