Sebastian Faulk’s  protagonist, Philip Deval, is a quite youth with a degree in philosophy and a soldier recently returned from the beaches of Normandy, arrives in Palestine on a peace-keeping mission in the final days of the British Mandate. The Sea of Galilee glitters in the distance as war-weary troops marvel at the novelty of oranges and sun- a paradise that belies a fierce new conflict about to erupt.

Some years later, Philip begins work teaching at a school in the English countryside and meets the enigmatic music mistress, Frances Darwood. Over long evenings spent listening to records in her music room, they grow close.]

But Philip is a changed man, and must confront the secrets and scars of all he has lived through-which threaten, even now, to upend his future.

Sebastian Faulk’s ambitious hybrid novel Farewell to Eden, is on one hand, faith and history and the harrowing aftermath of the second world war; on the other, there is an entertaining murder mystery engulfed into the plot.

A series of traumatic events forces him and the reader to question what morality means in a world that seems to have lost its bearings.

The book jumps backwards and forwards in time, beginning with Phillip as a world-weary ex-soldier starting a teaching job at a girl’s school with the sinister name of Witchelm, and switching back to his life with Alice, and to his sojourn in Palestine, after the war. 

In Palestine, the British are hated by Jews and Muslims alike; Jewish terrorist set off bombs; Muslims retaliate; the British initiate reprisals, and, despite some individuals being capable of showing compassion to each other, the killings being anew. Philips deployment in Palestine ends in tragedy, with the death of a beloved colleague. Devastated and demoralised he returns to a Britain that is itself suffering from trauma, seeking both rest and roots. The seedy lodging houses and cinemas but with “ four guineas a week… no running water, and the passing lorries made the windows shudder in their frames.”

In Witchelm school a murder takes place in the school grounds, with an odd-job man found dead in mysterious circumstances. Aficionados of murder mystery may find it straightforward to guess the killer’s identity; but still, the revelation is in keeping with the novel’s deep sense that justice is inescapable.

France, a daughter of Jehovah’s Witness, she was transported to a labour camp by the Nazis, and there endured the utmost horrors. 

Farewell to Eden by Sebastian Faulks, Hutchinson Heinemann £22, 368 pages.