Publisher's Synopsis
On a hotel terrace in Jerusalem sits Alistair Mallory's last remaining friend. How is it, he asks himself, that only a week ago he was collecting Alistair's body from the foot of a mountain in Tibet? That he then had the body cremated on the banks of a river in India? And that he is about to take his ashes out to the desert for scattering? He needs to know before he can let him go.
It begins with the 'blue dune', Alistair's name for a mysterious experience had in the desert beyond the terrace. So powerful is it that it leads him to embark on a journey to recapture it. Yet it proves elusive, compelling him to seek ever more extreme experiences, until inspiration becomes addiction, guiding haunting, the wish to recapture the will to forget...
The Pillars of Cloud and Fire is the story of one man's destruction by an event that will not let him go. But it is also the story of us all, the blue dune a symbol not fatal but vital: of our need for a life with meaning.
