Archive - February 21, 2013

Winner in 1986 of  the National Book Award Bob Shacochis’s (Eastern Caribbean 1975-76) first book in ten years spans five decades and three continents. According to the pre-press on the novel, “it is an epic, visceral masterwork that traces a global lineage of political, cultural, and personal tumult from WWII to September 11th.” In The Woman Who Lost Her Soul, Shacochis returns to occupied Haiti and writes a  novel about coming of age in a pre 9-11 world.    The book’s flap-copy reads: When humanitarian lawyer Tom Harrington travels to Haiti to investigate the murder of a beautiful and seductive photojournalist, he is confronted with a dangerous landscape riddled with poverty, corruption, and voodoo. It’s the late 1990s, a time of brutal guerrilla warfare and civilian kidnappings, and everyone has secrets. The journalist, whom he knew years before as Jackie Scott, had a bigger investment in Haiti than it seemed, and to make sense of her . . .

The February 25, 2013 issue of The New Yorker has a new short story by Paul Theroux  (Malawi 1963-65) entitled, “The Furies” that is about a man who leaves his wife for a younger woman, and the revenge his ex-wife visits upon him. You can read more (but not the whole story) here. It is a terrific piece of fiction, and we haven’t seen much short fiction lately from Theroux. His next book is on traveling in Africa, The Last Train to Zona Verde, and is due out in May.