Mission is set largely in mid-1970s Kenya. Five characters, in five chapters each with several scenes, see a series of events from their own perspectives and thus influence one particular event to which individually they react differently. Four chapters are set in 1970s Kenya, but one, placed centrally in the structure, is thirty years on from the others and is set in London. The novel attempts to deal with the concept of identity, seen through filters of poverty, religion, politics and, underpinning everything, an idea of justice, examined from the perspective of each character’s individual, perhaps personal motivation, or mission.

The five characters are Michael, a missionary priest, Mulonzya, a member of parliament and businessman, Janet, a young teacher and later headteacher of a London school, Boniface, a ex-seminarian church worker and Munyasya, a retired officer from the King's African Rifles. Though each of the five chapters bears one of their names, the book describes a series of events and relationships which involve them all, and also others, to form a continuum within which each character is seen to pursue some personal mission.

The central event, which all five main characters influence, sees Father Michael drive his car over Munyasya, killing him. Boniface and his wife Josephine are standing nearby, having just got out of the same car with their child. Via a letter she has written to Michael, Janet is also there, as are Mulonzya and his son, in the car behind. Each character has a mission, but what that mission might be, and what are its ends, is the subject of the book.

The role of the missionary churches in Africa is examined, as are the personal pressures experienced by each of the characters. Father Michael's paternalism towards those he feels he must serve and his ambivalence towards clericalism are placed alongside his almost passionate desire to use the power and influence of the Church to seek justice. Eventually, however, it is the development of his relationship with Janet which forces him to question the worth of his work. The relationship with church, Janet and personal mission all endure and coalesce in a surprising conclusion, decades later.

But Mission is an African book, not a book about Africa. In their own way, the three characters, James Mulonzya, Boniface Mutisya and Edward Munyasya represent three different Kenyas. Munyasya is a product of colonialism experienced through service in the army. We find him a decrepit, disillusioned and quite mad old man. But he has the last laugh, literally, but ironically. Mulonzya, a politician, represents the Kenya which experienced decolonisation, entered the world order in its own right and grasped opportunities pragmatically, as they arose. Though claiming to represent the public good, Mulonzya's mission is usually his own interest. Boniface, however, is young, a product of independent Kenya. Ideas of independence are taken for granted, and he assumes that he may participate in the life of a modern state unhindered by the restrictions suffered by his elders. Both poverty and, paradoxically, education, however, conspire to limit what Boniface might achieve in life.

Several less significant characters play important roles in the structure. John Mwangangi, a local administrator, and his wife Lesley, Charles Mulonzya, James's son, Bishop John O'Hara and Josephine Ngao, Boniface's eventual wife, all live out, in some measure, the arguments which are developed elsewhere. Josephine, for instance, resorts to prostitution to pay her way through school. Charles Mulonzya, unlike his father, is merely a businessman. He has no particular interest in anything except making money, and that includes his father's beloved homeland. John Mwangangi is an idealist. Having lived out of Kenya for years, he has returned home and believes he has the answers. His own father, however, disowns him. This symbolises the inappropriateness of transplanted solutions, aimed at solving others' problems.

Janet represents something quite different, however. Placed centrally in the structure, she is the conscience of the developed world, overtly interested and committed, but perhaps shallow, self-obsessed and, in the end, still instrumental in perpetuating the same injustices as before. This lack of concern is suggested by the fact that she decides to have an abortion at the same time that Boniface and Josephine are losing their own child. Father Michael, alongside whom she lived for two years, becomes infatuated with the memory of her and cannot reconcile her decision with what he sees as his work for justice. He and Janet communicate by letter and later by mere association, and a relationship between sexual and religious ecstasy is suggested, but exactly what Michael will do in the future is left open until many years later when an apparently surprising conjunction suggests that he still might be pursuing a personal mission.

Munyasya is the key character, however. His section is quite different from the others, written in a different style which is largely a dialogue between himself and his dead step-father. What is presented here is a model for the "traditional" education of a child by a parent, where values and culture are transmitted in one package, which offers identity and prescriptions for life. The fact that Munyasya, by espousing the role defined for him by colonialists, has rejected those values and prescriptions is highlighted by the ghost of his step-father as a crime for which he must atone before he can be released from the pain and suffering of his now destitute life. Together step-father and son hatch a plot, a mission, which will reclaim Munyasya's dignity and undo the error of his life. That these cultures and assumptions have changed and now no longer apply is suggested all along by the fact that it is the ghost of Munyasya's step-father which haunts him, rather than his own father. This is finally confirmed in the last scene when, as Munyasya dies, it becomes clear that the entire mission was mis-conceived from the start.

Mission is a large book of more than 180,000 words. Actual place names are used and characters' names are all real Akamba names. The story covers local and national politics, the nature of religious experience, the role of the Church in Africa and the reality of charity. Though set primarily in Kenya, there are sections set in Nigeria and Malaya, and most of chapter three is set in London. At the heart of the book, however, is a plea that the reader should empathise with the characters and the pressures which shape their lives. It encourages a view of "Third World issues" which is fundamentally different from problems relating to economics, poverty and disease. In Mission, characters are not presented in this zoological manner, to be observed from outside. Rather we should see these lives as the struggles of people trying to cope with rapid change and a search for identity. This is why I describe Mission as an African book, not a book about Africa.