Eight Days

by Gabriel Fielding

With the same brilliant writing that made his previous books memorable, Gabriel Fielding now writes a novel of conscience ."...His characters have have a power of haunting even after you have finished reading; their confessions cry from the depths..."
Eight days on the surface, is a novel of suspense and intrigue, set in an international zone on the northern tip of Africa. The zone is a law unto itself; violence and blackmail the order of the day.
William Chance, a prison doctor and a recent convert to Catholicism, comes for a holiday into this highly charged, sinister and most un-Catholic atmosphere. He wants time and opportunity to adjust his mince and conscience to his conversion. Instead had finds every precept challenged and tested; his very life endangered.
The actual story of Dr chance's eight days will mean different things to different readers but no one can fail to be stimulated. By the play of character upon character by the astonishing dialogue, the flash of ideas and by the conflicts -
With Marcovicz, the ex-convict convinced that it had been ordained that he murder;
With Columb Macgrady, the trapped American who believes himself dying of cancer;
With Macgrady's extraordinarily beautiful and young wife Anna.
With Fraser and his cohort, Dr. Friese, monarchs of the underworld; people of all beliefs, of strange faiths and many purposes.
Dr. Chance, impelled by his faint and his his profession, and his love for Anna, to help the Macgrady's becomes inextricably involved. The eight days are literally a lifetime, for him and for all the others who are searching for values to make sense of life, for some truth to justify their actions-An unusual book, not easily forgotten.

370 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1958

About the author

Gabriel Fielding is the pseudonym of Alan Gabriel Barnsley, who was born in Hexham, Northumberland in 1916.The son of an Anglican Clergyman and descendent of Henry Fielding on his mother’s side. “I remember a terrible separation when I was sent away at the age of eight, to a snob, preparatory school in the south of England, where everything and everyone, from the masters to the hens, seemed hostile. I think this, in a sense, was the beginning of the pain, out of which I write”. Fielding studied medicine at Trinity College Dublin until 1939; failing to qualify there, he finished at St George’s Hospital London. After serving in the Royal Army Medical Corps during World War II he started a general medical practice and worked part time for Her Majesty’s Prison, Maidstone, Kent until 1966.”Medicine, to me, was the sentence I had to fulfill to be free to write”. He came to America in 1966 as author-in-residence at Washington State University. Fielding remained there as a Professor of English and Creative Writing until his retirement in 1981. His works include: The Frog Prince and Other Poems(1952), Brotherly Love (1954), Twenty –Eight Poems(1955), In the Time of Greenbloom (1956), Eight Days(1958), Through Streets Broad and Narrow (1961), The Birthday King ( 1963) Gentlemen in their Season(1966), New Queens for Old ( 1972), Pretty Doll Houses(1972) and The Women of Guinea Lane( 1986).

Awards include St Thomas More Gold Medal 1963, W.H. Smith Award in 1964, Honorary Doctorate of Literature, Gonzaga University 1966, Washington State Governor’s Writer Award 1973, and Distinguished Professor Washington State University, 1981.

"It is a matter for grave doubt that Mr. Fielding could write anything from a postcard to a lexicon without perception and grace and brilliance"-Dorothy Parker