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Hilary Mantel called Fieldwork "a quirky, often brilliant debut, bounced along by limitless energy, its wry tone not detracting from its thoughtfulness." Stephen King said it was "a story that cooks like a mother." Now Mischa Berlinski returns with his second novel, Peacekeeping, an equally enthralling story of love, politics, and death in the world's most intriguing country.
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. 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 we neither understand nor control - 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.
BookBrowsers ask Mischa Berlinski
I read that you lived in Thailand while writing Fieldwork and in Haiti when writing Peacekeeping . Were these novels autobiographical at all? And how did you end up in Istanbul, your current country of residence?
-kim.kovacs
"Starred Review. Berlinksi, whose Fieldwork was nominated for a National Book Award, is a kind of heir to Graham Greene and Robert Stone, both for his excellent storytelling and for the way it can reveal a bigger picture." - Kirkus
"This is a fascinating and well-plotted novel." - Publishers Weekly
"With the eye of an anthropologist and the heart of a novelist, Berlinski vividly depicts the stark contrast of physical beauty and grinding poverty that is the essence of Haiti. Much of the novel's tension - and its humor - is born out of the clash of these extremes." - Library Journal
This information about Peacekeeping was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo Credit: Copyright Louis Monier
Mischa Berlinski is the author of Fieldwork, a finalist for the National Book Award, and Peacekeeping. He has written for the New York Review of Books, Men's Journal, and Harper's Magazine, and his writing has appeared in Best American Essays and Best American Travel Writing. He lives in Istanbul.
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