Monday, September 29, 2008

what i'm reading now



This book was recommended by my blogger friend Mary Lee Fowler, author of the book Full Fathom Five and the blog of the same name. This may be the best book I've read all year (not counting Mary Lee's). Here is a blurb from the back cover: "When his girlfriend takes a job in Thailand, Mischa Berlinski goes along for the ride, planning to enjoy himself and work as little as possible. But one evening a fellow expatriate tips him off to a story: a charismatic American anthropologist, Martiya van der Leun, has been found dead -- a suicide-- in the Thai prison where she was serving a life sentence for murder. Curious at first, Mischa is soon immersed in the details of her story. This brilliant, haunting novel expands into a mystery set among the Thai hill tribes, whose way of life became a battleground for the missionaries and the scientists living among them.

Field Work by Mischa Berlinski

1 comment:

ml said...

So glad you're trumpeting the praises of this one. I think this guy is brilliant in wrapping what could have started as a dissertation in anthropology in the cloak of an irresistible mystery. So you can't stop reading, but you're learning new things all the time.