BETWEEN THIS WORLD AND THE NEXT

A world of hurt envelopes veteran war photographer Joseph “Fearless” Nightingale and a brutalized young Cambodian woman, Song, as both seek to overcome tragedy.

It’s the late 1990s. Fearless, a Black Londoner who passes for white, has flown to Cambodia to deal with ghosts. He’s reeling from the murder of his father, a revolutionary-minded professor, who was shot at the end of a visit with Pol Pot, and from the death of Fearless’ romantic partner and unborn child in a car crash. Song, 18, a product of poverty and negligence, has been enslaved by a sadistic brute in an apartment from which she has not been allowed to step outside for three years. Shocked to learn that her twin sister, Sovanna, from whom she was separated years ago, is alive and being held in a nearby building, Song stages an escape and attempts to rescue her, armed with Molotov cocktails—only to have her sister vanish behind the flames. Having had his self-pity doused and his empathy awakened by his brief encounters with the courageous Song, Fearless finds her and joins her in a search for Sovanna that takes them through a criminal underground that springs bad surprises. A Russian expatriate who Fearless thought was a friend turns out to be a ruthless arms trader who was involved in the horrific abuse and murder of trafficked children. Herat recalls Robert Stone with his themes of morality, redemption, and uncrossable cultural boundaries. The dizzying narrative, which for long stretches circles around basic plot elements, sometimes loses focus. But in capturing a place and state of mind in which corruption is viewed as “the only breach against chaos,” the London-based, Sri Lanka–rooted author has given us a book that won’t be easy to forget.

A dogged thriller with political bite.