SYNOPSIS
Young Sister Clodagh can scarcely contain her pride when she is appointed Superior of a new convent to be established by her order of working nuns in a remote region of the Himalayas. Things start to go wrong almost immediately after the nuns arrive at the House of Women, a former harem given to them by the local ruler, whose impetuous young son is more interested in a dancer than in his studies. Worst of all, the youngest nun, Sister Ruth, conceives a passion for the ruler’s agent, a brusque Englishman with little time for the nuns – and believes Clodagh is her rival for his attention. Passions rise as all the inhabitants of Mopu are drawn into a rising hysteria, and the nuns find themselves fighting for their sanity as much as their faith, in what now seems a telling, if unintended, anticipation of Britain’s imminent withdrawal from India.
