An election has been held at the Abbey of Crewe. The new Lady Abbess takes up her high office with implacable serenity. She expected to win one way or the other.

But her defeated rival has not lost gracefully. She alleges electoral chicanery, and the scandal-scenting media swing into righteous action. Meanwhile in every corner of the beseiged convent (not forgetting the poplars which line the Avenue of Meditation) hidden microphones silently record successful layers of cover-ups, put-ons and pay-offs. It is a situation not without its echoes....

With cold efficiency Sister Walburga, the prioress, and Sister Mildred, the novice mistress, ('Two of the finest nuns I have ever had the privilege to know') have made the Abbey hum like a kind of Gregorian dynamo; Sister Winifrede, possessor of 'a mind where no dawn breaks', runs the errands ('The scandal stops at Sister Winifrede,' says the Abbess); Sister Gertrude is forever abroad, processing miracles of ecumenical reconciliation and reporting to the Abbess via the green telephone.

Parallel after parallel slides wickedly into place as Muriel Spark's hilarious new novel transfigures a marvellously telling satire into a luminous and universal parable.