The Promise of Light (32 page)

One soldier stood on the thatched roof of a house. He held the white flag above his head and waved it back and forth over the town.

The armistice had come, even if just for a while. I felt the cautious reaching of my thoughts toward home, the distant rhythm returning.

A man walked up the hill, hands in the pockets of a green corduroy jacket. He stopped when he saw me.

I saw my own face looking back, with a haze of age across it. The man took his hands from his pockets and shielded the sun from his eyes.

I walked down the hill. In a moment I started to run. I had a sense of rushing past the frail shell of my body, treading lightly through distance and time.

Also by Paul Watkins

Night Over Day Over Night

Calm at Sunset, Calm at Dawn

In the Blue Light of African Dreams

Stand Before Your God

Archangel

The Story of My Disappearance

The Forger

Additional Praise for
T
HE
P
ROMISE OF
L
IGHT

“
The Promise of Light
is that rare find, an action-packed book written in prose as sharp as the crack of rifle fire, as evocative as the smell of burning peat.”

—
The Providence Journal

“Prose of precise and taut elegance … With his intense narrative drive and his ability to be literary without seeming so, [Watkins] is a writer who should richly reward readers of many desires for years ahead.”

—
The Miami Herald

“The narrative is thick with the smells and tastes of a strange and violent place.”

—
New York Magazine

“Watkins has outdone himself: This gifted young writer has written his best yet.”

—
Kirkus Reviews
(starred review)

“[A] stunning odyssey of a young man’s coming-of-age under brutal circumstances … Watkins spins his beautifully researched story in compact, tensile, and metaphorically charged prose.… The novel hurtles along with jolting surprises and breathtaking immediacy.”

—
Publishers Weekly
(starred, boxed review)

“
The Promise of Light
is a book of self-discovery, a modern odyssey illuminated by startlingly powerful prose.… Buy it, then savor it.”

—
Lexington Herald Leader

“This breathtaking novel is bound to make those who consider themselves writers wish they had authored this luminous fiction. [Watkins] has gotten into the heart and minds of people in this country and Ireland in 1921 so successfully that the reader gets caught in a time warp.… An incomparable work of fiction.”

—
Communique

“This is Hemingway without the sappy stuff: great adventure, big themes, all bleakly and existentially rendered.”

—
Booklist

THE PROMISE OF LIGHT
. Copyright © 1992 by Paul Watkins. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address Picador USA, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

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First published in Great Britain by Faber & Faber Limited in 1992

First published in the United States by Random House, Inc.

First Picador USA Edition: November 2000

eISBN 9781466887664

First eBook edition: November 2014