The Laughing Monsters - Hardcover

Johnson, Denis

3.17

4,027 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1443437999 ISBN 13: 9781443437998

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers, 2014

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Roland Nair calls himself Scandinavian but travels on a U.S. passport. After ten years' absence, he returns to Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, to reunite with his friend Michael Adriko. They once made a lot of money here during the country's civil war, and, curious to see whether good luck will strike twice in the same place, Nair allows himself to be drawn back to a region he considers hopeless.

Adriko is an African who styles himself a soldier of fortune and who claims to have served, at various times, the Ghanaian Army, the Kuwaiti Emiri Guard, and the American Green Berets. He's probably broke now, but he remains, at thirty-six, as stirred by his own doubtful schemes as he was a decade ago.

Although Nair believes some kind of money-making plan lies at the back of it all, Michael's stated reason for inviting his friend to Freetown is that Nair should meet Michael's fiancee, a college girl named Davidia from Colorado. Together the three set out to visit Michael's clan in the Uganda-Congo borderland-but each of these travellers is keeping secrets from the others.

Shadowed by Interpol, the Mossad, and MI-6, Nair gets mired in lust and betrayal in a landscape of frighteningly casual violence as he travels with Adriko and Davidia, gets smuggled into a war zone, kidnapped by the Congo Army, and terrorized by a self-proclaimed god ruling over a dying village. Their journey through a land abandoned by the future leads Adriko, Nair and Davidia to meet themselves not in a new light, but rather in a new darkness.

A high-suspense tale of kaleidoscoping loyalties in the post-9/11 world, The Laughing Monsters shows one of our great novelists at the top of his game.

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Review:

An Amazon Best Book of the Month, November 2014: In this slim, fiery, full-speed-ahead novel, National Book Award winner Denis Johnson has created two of the more memorable characters I’ve read this year. Roland Nair and Michael Adriko are soldiers, spies, friends, liars. They’ve fought side by side, witnessed torture and death. They also once made stacks of illicit cash (diamonds), and now Michael has an outrageous plan to make more (uranium - maybe). Years after they last parted, they reunite in Freetown, Sierra Leone, with Michael’s innocent and stunning fianc� along for the adventure. Uncowed by the madness and deceptions swirling around them all, Michael is an absolutely shimmering fictional creation -- both an elegant trained killer, and a lovable man-child. He’s full of secrets (“more will be revealed” is a verbal tic) and dark wisdom (“people don’t quite understand - to be eaten pays a compliment to your power”). He’s also lustful, greedy, tormented, violent and, incongruously, hopeful and hilarious. What Michael really wants is love, and family -- the home he’s never had. As he drags his friend and fianc� deeper into West Africa, in a desperate search for his long-lost village, we root for Michael, even as this irresistible and infuriating child of war barrels exuberantly toward darkness. In a murky post-9/11 world, Johnson seems to be saying, trust and friendship are what we make them. –Neal Thompson

About the Author:

Denis Johnson is the author of The Name of the World, Already Dead, Jesus' Son, Resuscitation of a Hanged Man, Fiskadoro, The Stars at Noon, and Angels. His poetry has been collected in the volume The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly. He is the recipient of a Lannan Fellowship and a Whiting Writer's Award, among many other honors for his work. He lives in northern Idaho.

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