"A social satire of epic proportions and one that does not suffer by comparison with
Thackeray's Vanity Fair...the whole comedy of manners, convincing both in its fidelity to life
and as a work of art."New York Times on the Forsyte Chronicles

John Galsworthy's epic Forsyte Chronicles, a nine-volume series of novels dramatizing the fictional
but entirely representative family of propertied Victorians, the Forsytes, has become established as
one of the most popular and enduring works of twentieth century literature. He made their lives and
times, loves and losses so real that readers accused him of including real individuals whom they
knew as the characters in his drama.

Flowering Wilderness is the middle novel in the third trilogy of the series, called End of the
Chapter, which concerns the cousins of the younger Forsytes, the Cherrells. A story of individual
emotional struggle within the impositions of society, the plot concerns the unconventional Wilfrid
Desert, a Great War veteran and poet who renounced Christianity for Islam at pistol point, and his
adoring fiance, Dinny Cherrell, who was prepared to defy her world's moral code for him.