A Door in the Earth

Waldman’s potent novel (after The Submission) follows Parveen Shamsa, freshly out of college and inspired by Mother Afghanistan, a memoir written by an American ophthalmologist named Gideon Crane recounting his time working in remote Afghanistan, as she sets out to retrace Crane’s footsteps. Armed with a grant from UC Berkeley and introductions to Crane’s old host, Waheed, Parveen, an Afghan-American from Northern California, heads for the maternity clinic Crane built for the village, intent on reconnecting with her Afghan heritage and actualizing her idealism. Reality, however, is far more complicated than Crane’s palatable account: without a doctor, the clinic is a hollow shell, and Crane’s meddling did little more than throw the lives of locals into chaos. When a detachment of U.S. Army engineers begin construction on a road to the village—a PR play inspired by the clinic’s fame—the convenient fantasy constructed by Mother Afghanistan comes into direct conflict with the messy realities of war. Waldman, a former reporter for the New York Times out of Kabul, paints a blistering portrayal of the misguided aspirations and convenient lies that have fed the war in Afghanistan. This is an impressive novel. [em]Agent: Bill Clegg, the Clegg Agency. (Aug.) [/em]