Paul Pickering

It is September 2009, Ramadan and the eve of Afghanistan's first 'democratic' elections when young American Malone, pilot for an aid airline, does Fatima Hamza the favour of flying her out of Kabul to Bamiyan, while his surgeon wife Kim heads south to Kandahar. The beguiling, Oxford-educated Pash...

Now a famous classical pianist, S. Miles-Harcourt, aka “Smiles,” arrives in Congo to play a Peace and Reconciliation Concert, and to make amends with his former schoolteacher and mentor, Lyman Andrew, who has buried himself in the war-torn jungle. Smiles owes his success to the man he helped ruin...