'He watched her as she moved away and he saw her face drawn stupidly with suffering. Yet he could not realize she was hurt. He could not believe in her suffering or suppose it possible that anyone could suffer because of him'

Dublin in 1921. A group of Catholics looks towards Riordan, their legendary leader, for deliverance from the ignominious memory of the Easter Rising. At the end of the week he will emerge from exile ... The instigator of the plot is Sean, a young and intractable crusader whose avowal of self-sufficiency is undercut by his reliance upon the Englishman Arion, the ballast to Sean's colliding moods. Yet the real Arion is elusive and Sean's temper cannot reach him. Nor can Elizabeth: though she sometimes shares his bed, the hallmark of their liaison is indifference. As the week draws to a close, the links between them shift and strain and for Sean and Elizabeth, its outcome can only signify betrayal.

Blending the tensions of a political drama with an intricate portrait of three people and the loneliness which both separates and binds them, Olivia Manning has created a dexterous and haunting novel.