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Winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing
Praise for Between This World and the Next:
“Captivating, immersive, and arrestingly beautiful, Between This World and the Next holds you in its grip as it effortlessly navigates the complexities of our modern world.”
— Saleem Haddad, author of Guapa
“A hauntingly beautiful story of loss and war and the lives we build around them. Herat’s rendering of Cambodia is vivid, dark, and heartbreaking, as three-dimensional as any character. With echoes of Lawrence Osborne and Graham Greene, Between This World and the Next brutally and wrenchingly captures the consequences of modern amorality and the sacrifices we make for redemption. A tale that’s determined not to let you go.”
— I.S. Berry, author of The Peacock and the Sparrow
“After a chance encounter, Song and Fearless, each burdened with trauma, each with grief, set off on an extraordinary journey. First through the Cambodian underworld to uncover the mastermind behind a brutal criminal ring, then across Asia, Africa, and Europe to find and save each other, and finally through a mazy wilderness of arms dealers, spies, ordinary citizens, and corrupt, powerful bureaucrats to see if even in this fallen world, they might retain their fundamental humanity and, just possibly, also find the one true reason to live: love. Thrilling, terrifying, and complex, endowed with unforgettable characters and imbued with great beauty, Between This World and the Next is a terrific, gorgeous novel.”
— Paul Griner, author of The Book of Otto and Liam
A brainy and headlong international thriller of arms dealing, Between This World and the Next tells the story of Fearless, a burnt out British war photographer and Song, a Cambodian woman who has been physically and psychologically beset by the violence in her country. When Song disappears, leaving only a mysterious videotape behind, Fearless must navigate a dangerous network of shady power brokers, transnational kingpins, sex traffickers, and arms dealers, uncovering a sprawling network of criminality and corruption in a newly post-Soviet world. Praveen Herat challenges our own complicity as passive observers when exposed to a constant stream of media depicting suffering across the world and asks what we truly know about anyone, even the people we hold dearest.
This propulsive, page-turning thriller counters assumptions of what an immigrant writer is supposed to be. Riven by dark acts, the story is uplifted by love—the love between sisters, the love of the bereaved, and a remarkable platonic love between Fearless and Song. A passionate exploration of power, poverty, and greed, Between This World and the Next pushes immigrant literature to another literary stage with its sharp new perspective.
—Prize Judges Tiphanie Yanique, Deepak Unnikrishnan, and Ilan Stavans