Cover of The Convent

The Convent

The crumbling convent of Our Lady of Mercy stands alone in an uninhabited part of the Spanish sierra, hidden on a hill among dense forest. Its inhabitants are devoted to God, to solitude and silence—six women cut off from a world they've chosen to leave behind. This all changes on the day that Mother Superior Maria Ines discovers a suitcase punctured with air holes at the entrance to the retreat: a baby, abandoned to its fate. Is it a miracle? Soon she will find that the baby's arrival has consequences beyond her imagining, and that even in her carefully protected sanctuary she is unable to keep the world, or her past, at bay.

Read more

In this beautifully told novel, "we witness justice and injustice, theological controversy, the politics of a tiny enclosed society, despair, cruelty, generosity, scandal, suspicion and suicide, all told with immense verve and skill" (London Sunday Times).

Audience
adult
Length
medium · 224 pages

Click a tag to see books like this one that share it. Point at it (on a phone, tap it) for less of it instead.

Read it? Sign in to help tag it.

Liked The Convent? Here’s where I’d start.

These suit anyone who liked The Convent. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.

  1. Cervantes Street Shares fiction, historical fiction, Spain
  2. The Wrong Blood Shares historical fiction, fiction, Spain
  3. Tides of War Shares historical fiction, fiction, Spain
  4. I am Venus: A Novel Shares historical fiction, fiction, Spain

“People who read The Convent tend to reach for these next.”

  1. The Year After
  2. Girl by the Road at Night: A Novel of Vietnam
  3. The Green Shore
  4. Alice in Exile

“If you want more of the same (historical fiction), start with these.”

  1. Free onlineFree The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
  2. Catalina: A Romance
  3. El oro del rey
  4. The Frost on His Shoulders

“If it was the Spain that hooked you, try one of these.”

  1. The Sisterhood
  2. Winter in Madrid
  3. The Lost Diary of Don Juan: An Account of the True Arts of Passion and the Perilous Adventure of Love
  4. The Shadow of the Wind

“These start from a similar idea, even if they go somewhere else with it.”

  1. A Garden Lost in Time
  2. Together, Alone: A Memoir of Marriage and Place
  3. Souvenirs of Solitude: Finding Rest in Abba's Embrace
  4. When I Found You