June 2009 Debut of the Month.
Told in the first person by a freelance journalist, this is an investigation into the circumstances that led an American anthropologist to be jailed for murder in Thailand. It is a fascinating, multi-stranded, informative story. The detail of missionary work, primitive tribes, life in Thailand and other eastern areas are presented as non-fiction, complete with footnotes, but it’s a tale of jealousy, grief and murder, completely enthralling.
Comparison: Tash Aw, Amitav Ghosh, Geoff Ryman.
| Primary Genre | Modern and Contemporary Fiction |
| Recommendations: |
Mischa is a freelance reporter for an English-language newspaper in Thailand. One drunken evening he hears a story about the suicide of Martiya van der Leun, a charismatic American anthropologist who was serving a life sentence for murder. What begins as mild curiosity in the case rapidly becomes an obsession, as Mischa seeks to reconstruct the details of Martiya’s life – and death. He interviews her colleagues, seeks out the family of her victim, and eventually travels into the Thai hills, into the world of the remote Dyalo tribe whom Martiya studied and among whom she lived. What he uncovers is a tragic love story: of a woman who fell in love with the field and then – much later and with fatal consequences – with one of her subjects.
Fieldwork features in the following genres: Modern and Contemporary Fiction, Debut Books of the Month, eBooks of the Month, General Fiction, Fiction, Recommendations
Fieldwork is available in Paperback
Fieldwork was written by Mischa Berlinski and published by Atlantic Books
Fieldwork has 320 pages
£7.19
