Peacekeeping
A Novel
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
THE DARING, EAGERLY ANTICIPATED SECOND NOVEL BY THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD–NOMINATED AUTHOR OF FIELDWORK
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In tones that shift effortlessly from journalistic to atmospheric to deeply, darkly funny, Berlinski (Fieldwork) evokes a very detailed sense of place in his second novel. Set in J r mie, a small town on the southwestern peninsula of Haiti, on the edge the "azure stage" of the Caribbean where "life is fragile, transient: any day might be your last" we are introduced to Terry White, a former deputy sheriff and failed Florida politician, who, looking for redemption in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, takes a position with the United Nations Police peacekeeping mission. Terry is drawn first by his close relationship with the brilliant American-educated judge Johel C lestin and then by the judge's beautiful, enigmatic, green-eyed wife, Nadia ("Haiti," according to our narrator, a writer in J r mie accompanying his wife, who is a member of the UN mission, "was a place that sunk tentacles down deep into the soul"). The political and personal become entangled as Terry encourages the judge to challenge the long-standing Senat ur Maxim Bayard's hold on the region and build a road between the town and Port Au Prince. In the Judge's words, "A mango tree and a road are school fees for your child... A mango tree without a road is a pile of fruit." The narrator is an unnamed friend of Terry's well-meaning and sociable wife, Kay, and the story unfolds as his account of the events. Berlinski himself lived in J r mie while his wife worked for the UN, and the pages are steeped in verisimilitude, even (and perhaps more so) when the story tips to the outrageous. This is a fascinating and well-plotted novel.
Customer Reviews
Peacekeeping
Today is October 6, 2016, hours after Hurricane Matthew hit Haiti, and I have just finished reading Peacekeeping I understand from early reports that the brunt of the storm hit in Jeremie. The book is a beautiful work and I am still caught up in the life of the area and the people I met there. So I despair the tragedy happening there now and for many many days to come, doubly despair because I was there.