Description

A National Book Awards finalist and a Barnes and Noble Discover Great Writers Winter 2007 Selection

Vivid, passionate, funny, deeply researched, and page-turningly plotted, Fieldwork by Mischa Berlinski is about fascination and taboo—scientific, religious, and sexual. It introduces an assured and captivating new voice in American fiction.

How does Mischa Berlinski end up in Thailand in the middle of a clash between an anthropologist and missionaries? The Internet start-up he works for goes bust in San Francisco. He's bored, with no job in sight, until his girlfriend gets a job as a schoolteacher in northern Thailand. Mischa goes along and finds work with an English-language newspaper. 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 fifty-year sentence for murder.

Motivated first by simple curiosity, then by deeper and more mysterious feelings, Mischa searches relentlessly to discover the details of Martiya's crime. His search leads him to the origins of modern anthropology—and into the family history of Martiya's victim, a brilliant young missionary whose grandparents left Oklahoma to preach the Word in the 1920s and never went back. Finally, Mischa's obsession takes him into the world of the Thai hill tribes, whose way of life becomes a battleground for two competing, and utterly American, ways of looking at the world.

Praise for Fieldwork

"A great story. It has an exotic locale, mystery, and a narrative voice full of humor and sadness...You can't stop reading until midnight...and you don't hate yourself in the morning...A story that cooks."
—Stephen King, Entertainment Weekly

"A really, really good story...An intricate whodunit, both disturbing and entertaining...An intoxicating journey."
—Terry Hong, The Washington Post

"An impressive feat of literary acrobatics...An inspired and courageous book."
—Kevin Smokler, San Francisco Chronicle

"Fieldwork, is that rare thing—an entertainingly readable novel of ideas."
—Tim Rutten, Los AngelesTimes

"Berlinski's methodical account of the factors that led a rational intellectual to commit such a heinous crime is air-tight and intensely gripping. But equally notable is his ability to conjure such an elaborate portrait of the fictional Dyalo, and his treatment of both religious missionary and anthropological fieldwork is subtle and insightful...Impeccable research and a juicy, intricate plot pay off in this perfectly executed debut."
—Kirkus Reviews starred review

"Mischa Berlinski brings a wealth of vivid detail to his narrative, and writes with real authority. Fieldwork is as fascinating as an ethnographer's private journal, as entertaining as a finely plotted thriller."
—John Wray, author of Canaan's Tongue

Extended Copyright Information

FIELDWORK: A Novel by Mischa Berlinski. Copyright 2007 by Mischa Berlinski. Published by arrangement with Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC, New York. All rights reserved.

CAUTION: Users are warned that the Work appearing herein is protected under the copyright laws and reproduction of the text, in any for for distribution is strictly prohibited. The right to reproduce or transfer the Work via any medium must be secured with the copyright owner.

Related Links

Fieldwork from Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Fieldwork on the author's website

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About the Author

Mischa Berlinski was born in New York in 1973. He studied classics at Columbia University and at the University of California at Berkeley. Among other jobs, he has worked as a journalist in Thailand. He lives in Rome. Fieldwork is his first novel.

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Opening Lines (Experimental)

The main achievement of religion, as compared with animism, lies in the psychic binding of the fear of demons. Nevertheless, the evil spirit still has a place in the religious system as a relic of the previous age.
WHEN HE WAS A YEAR out of Brown, my friend Josh O’Connor won a Thai beach vacation ...

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Copyright

Copyright 2007 by Mischa Berlinski.

All Rights Reserved.

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