MORAL HAZARDS

A woman fights to protect the victims of sexual violence in the world’s largest refugee camp in Martin’s debut political thriller.

In the early 1990s, Canadian human rights lawyer Anik Belanger is on a mission to get wartime rape classified as a crime against humanity. After Anik loses her case against a former Nazi who forced her friend’s mother and other women to work as sex slaves in a concentration camp, her boss orders her to take a year off. She ends up finding a job at the world’s largest refugee camp in Dadaab, Kenya, where she interviews Somali women about their treatment in the ongoing civil war. There are plenty of women who need to talk. “This woman had terrible trouble,” Anik’s translator tells her of one volunteer. “This is why she wants to participate in our ‘punishment for rapers’ program. That is what she called it.’ Anik gave a start at the name given to their work but decided not to interrupt.” She finds an ally in Omar Khalil, a former Somali politician who now runs the camp’s school. Their mission is not so easy, however, as the women in the camp are still within the reach of a Somali warlord and his Italian protector. Martin’s prose is precise and powerful throughout this novel. The realistic descriptions of violence are startling, and some moments will stick with readers long after they put down the book: “That final night at the secret prison, there were forty-three prisoners…The first man sat motionless, blinded by the flashlight beam in his eyes.” The author states outright that he wrote the novel to inform people about the realities of military intervention and its impact on vulnerable civilian populations, but the book’s didacticism never gets in the way of the story. The deftly constructed characters help to give life to these issues while also involving readers in their particular plights.

A well-crafted novel that’s both informative and dramatically satisfying.