MIDNIGHT, AT THE WAR

War and its victims are juxtaposed against a journalist’s personal struggles in this novel set in New York and the Middle East.

Inspired by the careers of celebrated international correspondents Christiane Amanpour and Sylvia Poggioli, Laskar focuses this exemplary, tension-filled novel on Rita Das, an American reporter who runs headlong into war zones while running even faster from understanding her true self. Set mostly before and after 9/11, Rita catapults from one world calamity to another and witnesses harrowing conflicts in political hotspots including Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Gaza. Eventually, her editors send her to an unnamed Middle Eastern city-state, and it’s here that she finally wrestles with her inner conflicts about her marriage, her lover, on-the-job sexism, and her place in the world as a biracial woman (her father is white and her mother Bengali) and a mother-to-be. Her emotional turmoil makes the intriguing Rita a sympathetic character. Her interactions with her parents, her friends, and the people she encounters at work feel genuine and true to life, as do Laskar’s grizzly descriptions of shootings, bombings, and war’s injured, often starving casualties. Laskar deftly develops Rita’s character arc, from witnessing a horrific act of violence in India when she was a child through the attacks on the World Trade Center and beyond. The hallmarks of this absorbing novel are embedded in two literary achievements—an unerring examination of terrorism at home and abroad and a gripping exploration of the damage done by unhealed trauma. Laskar, a former reporter, thrusts us into scenes of horrific violence and suffering while expertly capturing the lives of seasoned journalists committed to bringing truth to their readers and listeners.

A dynamic novel about one woman’s struggle to understand the world and her own emotional chaos.