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A Novel
by Ben Fountain
From the award-winning, bestselling author of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk comes a brilliant and propulsive new novel about greed, power, and American complicity set in Haiti.
Haiti, 1991. When a violent coup d'état leads to the fall of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, American expat Matt Amaker is forced to abandon his idyllic, beachfront scuba business. With the rise of a brutal military dictatorship and an international embargo threatening to destroy even the country's most powerful players, some are looking to gain an advantage in the chaos–and others are just looking to make it through another day.
Desperate for money―and survival―Matt teams up with his best friend and business partner Alix Variel, the adventurous only son of a socially prominent Haitian family. They set their sights on legendary shipwrecks that have been rumored to contain priceless treasures off a remote section of Haiti's southern coast. Their ambition and exploration of these disastrous wrecks come with a cascade of ill-fated incidents―one that involves Misha, Alix's erudite sister, who stumbles onto an arms-trafficking ring masquerading as a U.S. government humanitarian aid office, and rookie CIA case officer Audrey O'Donnell, who finds herself doing clandestine work on an assignment that proves to be more difficult and dubious than she could have possibly imagined.
Devil Makes Three's depiction of blood politics, the machinations of power, and a country in the midst of upheaval is urgently and insistently resonant. This new novel is sure to cement Ben Fountain's reputation as one of the twenty-first century's boldest and most perceptive writers.
"[T]his is a novel of ideas in the best sense. Fountain's trenchant analysis of the geopolitical situation is not only subordinated to an intricate plot, it's deeply embedded in the conflicted minds of these characters, who know and love this besieged place. Nothing here captures the country's dire plight and indomitable spirit better than when Fountain writes: 'Haiti was dying. Haiti got up every morning and refused to be dead.'" —Ron Charles, The Washington Post
"[A] bold tale... Fountain brings a Graham Greene-like approach to Haiti's vagaries and wonders. This sweeping, bracing, and sobering exploration of the troubled island nation's perennial, heartbreaking turmoil and geopolitical complications is topical yet timeless, elaborate and nuanced, laden with political intrigue and immersed in cultural rituals." —Booklist (starred review)
"Fountain dramatically captures the ever-shifting nature of Haitian politics. The result reads like an update of Hemingway's To Have and Have Not, with some of the moral heft of Robert Stone's A Flag for Sunrise. Readers of international thrillers should pounce." —Publishers Weekly
"A fine-grained, if at times overly upholstered tale of humanitarian and political tragedy." —Kirkus Reviews
"Ben Fountain's powerfully written novel is many things at once―a spy thriller, a family saga, a love story, a treasure hunt, and a tale of brutal political repression, all set in the charged atmosphere of early 1990s Haiti. By succeeding at all of these, Devil Makes Three reminds us not only of the ways an ambitious, fully engaged novel can further our understanding of the world, but also of how pleasurable and satisfying reading such a novel can be." ―Imbolo Mbue, New York Times bestselling author of Behold the Dreamers and How Beautiful We Were
"Ben Fountain portrays with precision the native and foreign devils of Haiti in this extremely well-constructed novel. All must endure the intractability of this complex country, an intractability…that sometimes yields in proportion to one's willingness to risk everything." ―Yanick Lahens, author of Moonbath, winner of the Prix Femina
"Woven artfully into the fabric of Ben Fountain's literary thriller Devil Makes Three is a scathing indictment…Reflective and prescient, stunning in its narrative complexity and nuanced characterization, the novel is at once timely and timeless, working double duty as a reminder of the sins of America's past and a warning of those to come." ―John Vercher, author of Three-Fifths and After the Lights Go Out
"Devil Makes Three is the sort of expansive, heartbreaking, thrilling novel I didn't realize I was missing until it grabbed hold of me and wouldn't let go. Writing at the peak of his considerable powers, Ben Fountain makes a harrowing period in Haiti's recent history come wonderfully and tragically alive. This morally complex novel is why we read fiction." ―Jess Walter, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Cold Millions and Beautiful Ruins
"Devil Makes Three brings the relentless intimacy of great literature to the quest to understand Haiti. In this sense, the novel is both an act of wild faith and an act of mad love and, finally, a triumph." ―Bob Shacochis, author of The Woman Who Lost Her Soul and The Immaculate Invasion
"Devil Makes Three is a fast and riveting read, a gripping thriller braided with a couple of credible love stories. This novel will pin your ears back with some of its hard-won truths." ―Madison Smartt Bell, author of All Souls' Rising
This information about Devil Makes Three was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Larry D. Moore CC BY-SA 3.0
Ben Fountain was born in Chapel Hill and grew up in the tobacco country of eastern North Carolina. A former practicing attorney, he is the author of Brief Encounters with Che Guevara, which won the PEN/Hemingway Award and the Barnes & Noble Discover Award for Fiction, and the novel Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, winner of the National Book Critics' Circle Award and a finalist for the National Book Award. Billy Lynn was adapted into a feature film directed by three-time Oscar winner Ang Lee, and his work has been translated into over twenty languages. His series of essays published in The Guardian on the 2016 U.S. presidential election was subsequently nominated by the editors of The Guardian for the Pulitzer Prize in Commentary. He lives in Dallas, Texas.
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