The Humble Disciple

by Martin Booth

Piers Carrington is an elderly Englishman living in a Balkan city. He has few friends: only Viktor, a secret policeman and Petre, a university professor, share his quiet life which, like theirs, is being transformed.

The Socialist Dream, for which Piers killed and betrayed, has dissolved into a chaos of bread queues and poverty, this bleak future inextricably bound up with the New Order: and the State, no longer Communist and now antagonistic towards him, is stripping away his meager privileges.

All that remains is the loneliness of old age, his ruined aspirations, the memory of his perfidy - and the threat from the two Westerners who follow him.

In The Humble Disciple Martin Booth, bestselling author of Hiroshima Joe and The Black Chameleon, has crafted a haunting, highly topical story of political and moral disillusionment and isolation. It is a poignant and emotionally incisive dramatic novel of modern history overtaking one man's ideals.

339 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Martin Booth was a prolific English novelist and poet. He also worked as a teacher and screenwriter, and was the founder of the Sceptre Press.