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About
Mischa Berlinski's first novel, Fieldwork, was published in 2007 to rave reviews-Hilary Mantel called it "a quirky, often brilliant debut" and Stephen King said it was "a story that cooks like a mother"-and it was a finalist for the National Book Award. Now Berlinski returns with Peacekeeping, an equally enthralling story of love, politics, and death in the world's most intriguing country: Haiti.
When Terry White, a former deputy sheriff and a failed politician, goes broke in the 2007–2008 financial crisis, he takes a job working for the UN, helping to train the Haitian police. He's sent to the remote town of Jérémie, where there are more coffin makers than restaurants, more donkeys than cars, and the dirt roads all slope down sooner or later to the postcard sea. Terry is swept up in the town's complex politics when he befriends an earnest, reforming American-educated judge. Soon he convinces the judge to oppose the corrupt but charismatic Sénateur Maxim Bayard in an upcoming election. But when Terry falls in love with the judge's wife, the electoral drama threatens to become a disaster.
Tense, atmospheric, tightly plotted, and surprisingly funny, Peacekeeping confirms Berlinski's gifts as a storyteller. Like Fieldwork, it explores a part of the world that is as fascinating as it is misunderstood-and takes us into the depths of the human soul, where the thirst for power and the need for love can overrun judgment and morality.
When Terry White, a former deputy sheriff and a failed politician, goes broke in the 2007–2008 financial crisis, he takes a job working for the UN, helping to train the Haitian police. He's sent to the remote town of Jérémie, where there are more coffin makers than restaurants, more donkeys than cars, and the dirt roads all slope down sooner or later to the postcard sea. Terry is swept up in the town's complex politics when he befriends an earnest, reforming American-educated judge. Soon he convinces the judge to oppose the corrupt but charismatic Sénateur Maxim Bayard in an upcoming election. But when Terry falls in love with the judge's wife, the electoral drama threatens to become a disaster.
Tense, atmospheric, tightly plotted, and surprisingly funny, Peacekeeping confirms Berlinski's gifts as a storyteller. Like Fieldwork, it explores a part of the world that is as fascinating as it is misunderstood-and takes us into the depths of the human soul, where the thirst for power and the need for love can overrun judgment and morality.
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Reviews
"Powerfully intelligent . . . A politically sophisticated novel that plants, like pushpins, a handful of memorable characters into Haiti's arid soil . . . [Peacekeeping's] depths reside in Mr. Berlinski's rich portrait of a society, and his cool, probing writing about topics like sex, politics, journalism, race, class, agriculture, language and fear . . . Berlinski has a knack for writing short, sharp, surreal scenes . . . There's a good deal of magic in the way that Mr. Berlinski, in command of fact and emotion, pilots this big novel safely home."
Dwight Garner, The New York Times
"A formidable piece of work . . . the book's easy way with local stories and lore bespeaks the familiarity that comes with rich firsthand experience . . . [Berlinski is] a sharp collector of stories, and he has an enjoyable way of threading his narration with story: Berlinski knows how to keep leading us on."
James Wood, The New Yorker