Excerpt from a novel by William Golding

Following is a passage from Golding's fourth novel, Free Fall, in which the transfigured artist and prisoner-of-war Sammy Mountjoy perceives the world anew after a spell in solitary confinement and a spiritual crisis;

Huge tears were dropping from my face into dust; and this dust was a universe of brilliant and fantastic crystals, that miracles instantly supported in their being. I looked up beyond the huts and the wire, I raised my dead eyes, desiring nothing, accepting all things and giving all created things away. The paper wrappings of use and language dropped from me. Those crowded shapes extending up into the air and down into the rich earth, those deeds of far space and deep earth were aflame at the surface and daunting by right of their own natures though a day before I should have disguised them as trees. Beyond them the mountains were not only clear all through like purple glass, but living. They sang ...