Shacochis - The Woman Who Lost Her Soul

Praise for The Woman Who Lost Her Soul

Engrossing a soaring literary epic about the forces that have driven us to the 9/11 age. Shacochis darts around the globe over the span of five decades like a sorcerer of world history. always so relentlessly captivating that you dont dare fall behind.

Ron Charles, Washington Post

A lot of pages here and every one worth reading in this reckless, raucous, brilliant novel in quest of an elusive American heroine.

Alan Cheuse, NPR

A love story, a thriller, a family saga, a historical novel, and a political analysis of Americas tragic misadventures abroad. The novel yokes the narrative drive of the best Graham Greene and le Carr to the rhetorical force and moral rigor of Faulkner. With a vision at once bitingly realistic and sweepingly romantic, Bob Shacochis has written what may well be the last Great American Novel. What other American writer has put as much heart into his creations, as much drive, as much history?

Askold Melnyczuk, Los Angeles Review of Books

This novel amounts to a prequel of sorts to the war on terror, an epic examination of American foreign policy and loss of innocence, a worthy successor to the darkest works of Graham Greene and John le Carr Elegiac a searching and searing meditation on the questions someone might ask a century from now: Who were these Americans? How should history judge them? And us?

Jane Ciabattari, Boston Globe

Shacochis has written one of the most morally serious and intellectually substantive novels about the world of intelligence since Norman Mailers Harlots Ghost.

Tom Bissell, Harpers

A new masterpiece that will surely stand as the definitive political thriller of those fragile years of relative peace before September 11, 2001 There may be no final drafts of history, but this one will be read and reread for many years to come.

Dan Zigmond, San Francisco Chronicle

Brilliantly unveils the darker regions of human sexuality, evoked inside a historical buildup of international political deceit.

Jeffrey Hillard, Interview

The Woman Who Lost Her Soul, a showstopper (and doorstopper) of a novel by Bob Shacochis, is an atlas of the ways political violence corrupts both the individual and national consciousness. the prose is never less than lyrical, personal, and intelligent, but the real reason to read is to witness the near superhuman ambition of Shacochiss undertaking. If he were a rower, this would be a circumnavigation of the globe. If he were a sculptor, this would be Mount Rushmore. Lucky for us, hes a writer, and The Woman Who Lost Her Soul is a masterpiece.

Anthony Marra, Salon (Ultimate Book Guide, 2013)

Heartbreaking and riveting a sweeping, expansive book grounded by details such as epic potholes in Haitis roads and crowded ferry decks in Turkey. Without veering into conspiracy theories or melodrama, Shacochis builds for both his readers and his characters a sense that something important is being overlooked amid competing agendas an elegant reminder that connections are made one by onebut not everyone is playing the same game.

Jennifer Kay, Seattle Times

[A] masterful and sumptuous novel deliriously dense No one moves as forcefully through that terrain as Shacochis. He writes tenderly about terrible things. He unearths humanity when the reader most needs to lean against it. This is a memorable book by a great writer.

Steve Duin, The Oregonian

A compelling and thought-provoking novel it plays a deep game, and it will haunt your dreams [Shacochis] controls a hugely complex plot with great skill and writes set pieces with gripping effect Line for line, his writing is stunning.

Colette Bancroft, Tampa Bay Times

National Book Awardwinning novelist Shacochis makes a long-awaitedindeed, much-anticipatedreturn to fiction with this stunning novel of love, innocence, and honor lost The wait was worth it Shacochis has delivered a work that belongs alongside Joseph Conrad and Graham Greene it is memorably, smartly written An often depressing, cautionary, and thoroughly excellent tale of the excesses of empire, ambition, and the too easily fragmented human soul.

Kirkus (starred review)

A big book in every sense of the word Shacochis is a master at the top of his game. In this novel, he gives us real, raw-edged characters and a narrative that grips the reader from the get-go. And he does it with such gleaming word-craft and such a sure hand that the readers utter engagement never falters. The book is a murder mystery, a tale of political intrigue, a love story and a fraught father-daughter psychological saga. It was ten years in the writing and it is a masterpiece a brilliant, beautiful page-turner luminous writing unfurls across every blood-spattered, sweat-speckled, dust-caked page and makes The Woman Who Lost Her Soul a riveting, heartbreaking, and ravishing read. Its a novel of uncommon grace and grit that lodges like shrapnel in the psyche and works its way surely to the readers heart, without ever losing sight of those terrible intimacies.

Tallahassee Democrat

A masterful novel with the power to shake the bones of Graham Greene.

Bruce Barcott, Outside Magazine

The Woman Who Lost Her Soul cannot be put down it never loses its way or its ability to drag you along with it a wild, deadly ride. You wont want to let go.

Glenn Garvin, Miami Herald

Shacochis thinks big, and his new novel (his first in two decades) is truly magisterial immensely readable, this eye-opener (which could have been titled Why We Are in the Middle East) is essential reading.

Library Journal (starred review)

A beautifully written, Norman Mailerlike treatise on international politics, secret wars, espionage, and terrorism A brilliant book, likely to win prizes, with echoes of Joseph Conrad, Graham Greene, and John le Carr.

Booklist (starred review)

A brutal American-style le Carr, Shacochis details how espionage not only reflects a nations character but can also endanger its soul. Gritty characters find themselves in grueling situations against a moral and physical landscape depicted in rich language as war-torn, resilient, angry, evil, and hopeful.

Publishers Weekly (starred review)

No one in American literature is better at casting his imagination into the deepest currents of American culture and politics than Bob Shacochis. The long, ardent, admiring wait for his next novel has been worth every moment: The Woman Who Lost Her Soul is his masterpiece.

Robert Olen Butler

This big beauty of a book was worth the wait. Its tinglingly ambitious, vast in scope, and magnificently written. I could unerringly pick a Bob Shacochis sentence out of a police lineup of sentences, which is just about the highest praise I can offer to any writer.

Michael Cunningham

The Woman Who Lost Her Soul will grab you from the first sentence and keep you gasping and laughing and weeping until the end. A murder mystery, a spy thriller, and a daddy-and-daughter story, it is a thrilling gripping lesson in the dynamics that have swept through our world in the twenty-first century. Shacochis writes like an angel, and in this novel of culture, betrayal, and love he has found a perfect subject.

Susan Cheever

Bob Shacochis is the man for all syntheses, confabulating decades of time and volumetric immensities of geography into pitched and vivid dramatic narrative. Long in the making, but longer in the lasting, The Woman Who Lost Her Soul