Volume 53, Number 18 · November 16, 2006
The Devil in Africa
By Norman Rush
Acts of Faith
by Philip Caputo
Vintage, 669 pp., $15.95 (paper)
Philip Caputo's recent novel Acts of Faith, now published in paperback, is an ambitious tale of adventure, commerce, and love pursued in a setting of unrelenting violence. The action alternates between northern Kenya and the mountainous Nuba region in southern Sudan, where, in the late 1990s, Sudan's long-running civil war has been raging. The suffering generated by this war is, to be cold about it, something that outsiders can exploit, and the main characters in the novel have come from far away to do so, each in his or her own way. There are four main characters, three Americans (two men, one woman) and a Kenyan, Fitzhugh Martin, a self-described 'Man of All Races' (born in the Seychelles, he has French, Chinese, Irish, African, Arab, and Indian blood). All four are involved in supplying aid of one kind or another.
Review, 3000 words
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