Salvation : Scenes from the Life of St Francis

* Imaginative, scrupulously researched biography of a man who is both the most radical and the most universally beloved of all Christian saints - Francis.

Inspired by the great frescoes of St Francis of Assisi, the highly-praised author of PROPERTY has written a new and wholly original biography. Composed in a series of vividly realised ''panels'', SALVATION begins with the dying Francesco - and the rivalry for his body among the towns of medieval Italy - and moves back in time toward his mystical conversion. The old friar, exhausted by illness and division among his brotherhood, gives way to the zealous missionary who joins the Fifth Crusade, confident that he can convert Sultan al-Kamil in Egypt. Later, we see the unwashed and innocent revolutionary, unafraid to lecture a pope on Christ''s message, and finally the frivolous young Francesco on the deserted road where his encounter with a leper leads him to an ecstatic embrace of God. SALVATION is a window into a medieval world whose physicality and purity have rarely been rendered with such visceral power. Most important, it is a unique, immediate portrait of the great mystic, whose legend has resonated through the centuries in both religious and secular realms.