The Free Trader's Ghost

Parvati is a seven-year-old blind girl living in India with an alcoholic father, a prostitute mother, and a sadistic brother. But with two friends her age and a kind Jain to provide support, she manages to survive despite being a Dalit, or Untouchable.

Halfway across the world, Mortimer is an Oxford professor who discovers an old book by the economist Ricardo in a second-hand bookstall. A handwritten poem slipped within the pages catches his attention.

As Parvati struggles to avoid a child molesting sugar lord, Mortimer discovers the poem’s author was a First World War British soldier who believed strongly in free trade. Mortimer’s investigation into this powerful concept leads him to the book’s owner, a doctor named Madeleine with whom he has an immediate connection.

As romance percolates between them, Madeleine heads to India to help a paediatric eye clinic where she sees the country’s economic failings firsthand. She invites Mortimer to witness it for himself and thus sets all of these seemingly separate lives on a collision course with destiny that will change them all forever.

Filled with hope and optimism, The Free Trader’s Ghost explores a deep connection between humanity, trade, and our innate ability to progress.

Padraic Fallon was born in Wexford, Ireland, in 1946. He was the sixth and youngest son of the Irish poet and playwright Padraic Fallon.

He was a distinguished financial journalist, chairman of Euromoney Institutional Investor, and a director of the Daily Mail and General Trust.

He died in October 2012 and is survived by his wife, Gillian; four children, Jolyon, Nicola, Harriet, and Annabel; and nine grandchildren.

The Free Trader's Ghost, his third novel, began as a poem in 2011 that was inspired by the Christmas truce of 1914.