Murder at Morija - Tim Couzens

Murder ay Morija - Tim Couzens - Random House - 2003, first edition - 474pp, index, black and white photographs - hard softcover in good condition - Internally: fine and tightly bound.

Just before Christmas 1920, six people sat down to a meal at the Morija headquarters of the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society in Basutoland. All six were taken violently ill, and one of them – the eminent scholar and missionary Édouard Jacottet – died. They had been poisoned.
Eighty years after the event, acclaimed writer and historian Tim Couzens sets out in the great tradition of the ‘locked room’ detective story to discover what happened at Morija. Who killed Jacottet? Why was he killed? The answer, revealed here for the first time, is buried in a tale of heroism and courage, of sacrifice, deception, betrayal and faith.
Written and researched with extraordinary care (containing more than 150 photos, illustrations and maps), Murder at Morija is the story of a deeply committed man in an isolated African country to which he devoted his life. It is a groundbreaking and compelling study, a classical tragedy tempered with the sardonic smile of comedy.

From the reviews
If I have ever seen a book that encapsulates all the values most sought for recognition by the annual Sunday Times Alan Paton Awards, Murder at Morija is the one.
— The Star

In Couzens’ hands, this story, initially chanced upon and then remorselessly researched, becomes a mise en abîme, a mysterious French box inside an ever-widening cascade of contextual frames of reference.
— Sunday Times