The exciting third novel in Iggulden's Genghis Khan series tells the dramatic story of the Mongol invasion and conquest of Central Asia. Genghis has already defeated the Chinese and Koreans, and now marches his vast army west to punish and conquer the Muslim lands of central Asia ruled by Shah Mohammed.
A young orphan, Ruth Hilton, is seduced and then abandoned by the wealthy Henry Bellingham. She is left to bring up her child in a society that offers her no protection and seems to punish such innocence. Taken in by a Dissenting minister in the guise of a widow, she is given a chance to bring up her son whom she loves above all else.
In this brilliant work, the most influential philosopher since Sartre suggests that such vaunted reforms as the abolition of torture and the emergence of the modern penitentiary have merely shifted the focus of punishment from the prisoner's body to his soul.