The Book of Strange New Things — Michel Faber

A monumental, genre-defying novel more than ten years in the making. Michel Faber's The Book of Strange New Things tells the story of Peter Leigh, a devoted man of faith called to the mission of a lifetime, one that takes him literally light years away from his wife, Bea. Peter becomes immersed in the mysteries of an astonishing new environment and the ego-gratifying work of ministering to a native population hungry for the Bible -- this "book of strange new things" -- but he soon begins to receive increasingly desperate letters from home. North Korea is devastated by a typhoon; the Maldives are wiped out by a tsunami; England endures an earthquake, and Bea's faith, once the guiding light of their lives, begins to falter. A separation measured in galaxies, and defined both by one newly discovered world and another in a state of collapse, is threatened by an ever widening gulf that is much less quantifiable. And this is one of the book's many great achievements: Peter and Bea's trials lay bare a profound meditation on faith, love tested beyond endurance, and the responsibility we have to others.