When a car explodes in a crowded part of Kabul ten years after 9/11, a Japanese-American journalist is shocked to discover that the passengers were acquaintancesthree fellow ex-pats who had formed an unlikely love triangle.Alexandra was a human rights lawyer for imprisoned Afghan women. Justin was a born-again Christian who taught at a local school. Clay was an ex-soldier who worked as a private contractor. The car’s driver, Idris, was one of Justin’s most promising pupilsand he is missing.Drawn to the secrets of these strangers, and increasingly convinced the events that led to the fatal explosion weren’t random, the journalist follows a trail that leads from Kabul to Louisiana, Maine, Québec, and Dubai. In the process, the tortured narratives of these individuals become inseparable from the larger story of America’s imperial misadventures.In this monumental novel, Deni Ellis Béchard draws an unsentimental portrait of those who flock to warzones, indelibly capturing these journalists, mercenaries, idealists, and aid workers. More importantly, Béchard vividly brings to life the city of Kabul itself, along with the people who live there: the hungry, determined, and resourceful locals who are just as willing as their occupiers to reinvent themselves to survive.

Into the Sun

Béchard, Deni Ellis

House of Anansi Press

An astonishing novel of epic ambition, Vandal Lovewinner of the prestigious Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for best first book in 2007follows generations of a unique French-Canadian family across North America and through the twentieth century. A family cursea genetic trick resulting from centuries of hardshipcauses the Hervé children to be born either giants or runts. Book One follows the giants’ line, exploring Jude Hervé’s career as a boxer in Georgia and Louisiana in the 1960s, his escape from that brutal life alone with his baby daughter Isa, and her eventual decision to enter into a strange, chaste marriage with a much older man. Book Two traces a different kind of life entirely, as the runts of the family discover that their power lies in a kind of unifying love. François seeks the identity of his missing father for years, while his own son, Harvey, flees from modern society into spiritual quests. But none of the Hervés can abandon their longing for a place where they might find others like themselves. In assured and mystically powerful prose, Deni Y. Béchard tells a wide-ranging, spellbinding story of a family trying to create an identity in an unwelcoming landscape. Imbued throughout with a deep sensitivity to the physical world, Vandal Love is a breathtaking literary debut about the power of love to create and destroyin our lives, and in our history.

Vandal Love: A Novel

Literature & Fiction

United States

MILKWEED EDITIONS *

When a car explodes in a crowded part of Kabul ten years after 9/11, a Japanese-American journalist is shocked to discover that the passengers were acquaintancesthree fellow ex-pats who had formed an unlikely love triangle. Alexandra was a human rights lawyer for imprisoned Afghan women. Justin was a born-again Christian who taught at a local school. Clay was an ex-soldier who worked as a private contractor. The car’s driver, Idris, was one of Justin’s most promising pupilsand he is missing. Drawn to the secrets of these strangers, and increasingly convinced the events that led to the fatal explosion weren’t random, the journalist follows a trail that leads from Kabul to Louisiana, Maine, Québec, and Dubai. In the process, the tortured narratives of these individuals become inseparable from the larger story of America’s imperial misadventures. In this monumental novel, Deni Ellis Béchard draws an unsentimental portrait of those who flock to warzones, indelibly capturing these journalists, mercenaries, idealists, and aid workers. More importantly, Béchard vividly brings to life the city of Kabul itself, along with the people who live there: the hungry, determined, and resourceful locals who are just as willing as their occupiers to reinvent themselves to survive.

Into the Sun: A Novel

Literary

Assigned to write an exposé on Richmond Hew, one of the most elusive and corrupt figures in the conservation world, a journalist finds himself on a plane to the Congo, a country he thinks he understands. But when he meets Sola, a woman looking for a rootless white orphan girl who believes herself possessed by a skin-stealing demon, he slowly uncovers a tapestry of corruption and racial tensions generations in the making. This harrowing search leads him into an underground network of sinners and saints―and straight to the heart of his own complicity. An anthropologist who treats orphans like test subjects. A community of charismatic Congolese preachers. Street children who share accounts of abandonment and sexual abuse. A renowned and revered conservationist who vanishes. And then there is the journalist himself, lost in his own misunderstanding of privilege and the myth of whiteness, and plagued by traumatic memories of his father. At first seemingly unrelated, these disparate elements coalesce one by one into a map of Richmond Hew’s movements.

White: A Novel

With his first book, the Commonwealth Prize-winning Vandal Love, Deni Ellis Béchard "reinvented the generational novel with innovative brilliance" (Robert Olen Butler). In his second novel, Into the Sun, he offered "a ferociously intelligent and intensely gripping portrait of the expatriate community in Kabul" (Phil Klay). Most recently, Foreword Reviews described his third novel, White, as "captivating, careening, thrilling, and magical." In this, his fourth work of fiction, Béchard takes readers from nineteenth-century Prince Edward Island to modern-day Iraq, tracing the story of a North American family that is at once singular and emblematic, and exploring the cultural repercussions of war and violence. Reinventing themselves in often unexpected ways, the characters in this tapestry defy simplification. A pair of half-brothers come together and drift apart, one passive and risk-averse, the other driven by a passionate desire to understand their reclusive father. A student of Mesopotamian archaeology encounters a young Iraqi man and soon finds himself in Kurdistan, researching stolen artifacts along with mysteries in his father's past. An Irish-Acadian soldier carries his fiddle and folk song across the battlefields of the First World War. An orphan-turned-assassin pursues his target across the deserts of Mexico and Texas, using a novel as evidence for his location. Growing together and then apart, these and others chase their dreams and run from their nightmares, hungry for life and longing for purpose. Animated throughout by a striking beauty and ferocity, A Song from Faraway pieces together "stories we tell about ourselves," illuminating the human condition and our times.

A Song from Faraway: A Novel

When acclaimed author Deni Béchard first learned of the last living bonobosmatriarchal great apes that are, alongside the chimpanzee, our closest relatives in the animal kingdomhe was completely astonished. How could the world possibly accept the extinction of this majestic species? Béchard discovered one relatively small NGO, the Bonobo Conservation Initiative (BCI), which has done more to save bonobos than many far larger organizations. Based on the author’s extensive travels in the Congo and Rwanda, this book explores BCI's success, offering a powerful, truly postcolonial model of conservation. In contrast to other traditional conservation groups Béchard finds, BCI works closely with Congolese communities, addressing the underlying problems of poverty and unemployment, which lead to the hunting of bonobos. By creating jobs and building schools, they gradually change the conditions that lead to the eradication of the bonobos. This struggle is far from easy. Devastated by the worst military conflict since World War II, the Congo and its forests continue to be destroyed by aggressive logging and mining. Béchard's fascinating and moving account—filled with portraits of the extraordinary individuals and communities who make it all happen offers a rich example of how international conservation must be reinvented before it's too late.

Empty Hands, Open Arms: The Race to Save Bonobos in the Congo and Make Conservation Go Viral

History

Africa

Growing up in British Columbia, Deni Ellis Béchard believes his charismatic father is infallible. Wild, unpredictable, even dangerous, André is worshipped by his son, who believes that his father can do no wrong. But when Deni’s mother leaves his father and decamps with her three children to Virginia, the boy learns of his father’s true identity. André Béchard was once a bank robber―and so Deni’s imagination is set on fire. Boyish rebelliousness gives way to fantasies of a life of crime. Only when he goes off to college, however, does Deni begin to unravel the story of his father’s life, eventually finding the Quebecois family that André left behind long ago. At once an extraordinary family story and a highly unconventional portrait of the artist as a young man, Cures for Hunger is a deeply affecting memoir by one of the most acclaimed young writers in the world today.

Cures for Hunger

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

Bonobos have captured the public imagination in recent years, due not least to their famously active sex lives. Less well known is the fact that these great apes don’t kill their own kind, and that they share nearly 99% of our DNA. Their approach to building peaceful coalitions and sharing resources has much to teach us, particularly at a time when our violent ways have pushed them to the brink of extinction. Animated by a desire to understand bonobos and learn how to save them, acclaimed author Deni Ellis Béchard traveled into the Congo. Of Bonobos and Men is the account of this journey. Along the way, we see how partnerships between Congolese and Westerners, with few resources but a common purpose and respect for indigenous knowledge, have resulted in the protection of vast swaths of the rainforest. And we discover how small solutionsfound through openness, humility, and the principle that poverty does not equal ignorance”are often most effective in tackling our biggest challenges. Combining elements of travelogue, journalism, and natural history, this incomparably rich book takes the reader not only deep into the Congo, but also into our past and future, revealing new ways to save the environment and ourselves.

Of Bonobos and Men: A Journey to the Heart of the Congo

Idle No More, Truth and Reconciliation Commission, National Survey of Missing or Murdered Aboriginal Women … How can we co-exist if our common history is shame, injury, and anger? How can we counteract the misunderstandings of the other that lead to contempt? How can we make whites realize the invisible privilege that results from historical domination and the impact of cultural genocide on Indigenous peoples? In an attempt to open a dialogue, Kanape Fontaine and Béchard use personal stories to understand words and behaviors that are racist or that result from racism. In this epistolary exchange, Kanape Fontaine recounts her discovery of the residential schools, her obsession with the Oka Crisis, and life on the reserve in Pessamit, Quebec; Béchard talks about his father’s racism, the segregation of African-Americans, and his identity as a Quebecois living in the English-speaking world. By sharing honestly even their most painful memories, these two writers offer a humanist and universal book on the relationship to the other and the respect for difference.

Kuei, My Friend: A Conversation on Race and Reconciliation

Fontaine, Natasha Kanapè

Americas

Talonbooks

Assigned to write an exposé on Richmond Hew, the conservation world’s most elusive and corrupt humanitarian worker, an intrepid journalist finds himself on a plane to the Congo―a country he thinks he understands. But when he meets Sola, a woman searching for a rootless white orphan who believes herself possessed by a skin-stealing demon, he slowly uncovers a tapestry of corruption and racial tensions generations in the making. This harrowing search leads him into an underground network of sinners and saints―and everything in between. An anthropologist who treats orphans like test subjects. A community of charismatic Congolese preachers. Street children who share accounts of sexual abuse and abandonment. A renowned and revered conservationist who vanishes. And then there is the journalist himself, Deni Béchard, lost in his own misunderstanding of privilege and the myth of whiteness, and plagued by traumatic memories of his father. At first seemingly unrelated, these disparate elements coalesce one by one into a map of Richmond Hew’s movements. Fevered and dreamlike, White is a riveting exploration of whiteness, humanitarianism, and the lies of American exceptionalism and white supremacy.

White

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Books by Béchard, Deni Ellis