Well Founded Fear

For anyone interested in the plight of the Kurdish peoples, this new novel by Tom LeClair is a must-read. A fast-paced, exciting story of a Kurdish "subversive" in Turkey and the human rights lawyer who attempts to rescue him, this novel goes a long way toward enhancing our understanding of what it means to be displaced in the world. The language is crisp, the story sophisticated, and the subject timely. This novel should be required reading for the U.S. Department of State, as well as the United Nations--maybe someone can even get Barbara Bush to read it to her son. So if you wonder why the 101st Airborne was dropped into northern Iraq last Spring, or why the United States recently took control of Kurdish oil revenues here is your explanation.

Well Founded Fear is a thrilling, subversive, intelligent and deceptive novel. Readers of Don DeLillo will surely see the influence and will be thrilled that LeClair's linguistic virtuousity rivals the Don himself. Part international mystery, part legal thriller, part romance, the novel follows lawyer Casey Mahan on her seemingly altruistic trip to Greece. Mahan, while interviewing Kurdish applicants for asylum in Athens, finds that there is much to be done: Kurds in Iraq and Turkey are being murdered and tortured for reasons that are painfully apparent. The Kurds are being persecuted. Mahan works inside a legal system that cannot help as much as it needs to, and she wants to make a difference. And then she does. But can this difference actually make a difference in the terrorized lives of those who suffer? Read the novel.LeClair, in this brave work, attacks the governments that practice persecution, but also cautions those on the outside (us Americans) against blind altruism. That the novel is deceptive there can be no doubt. But there is a heart behind it that is magnanimous. Like the novels of Delillo, Richard Powers, and Joseph McElroy, Well-founded Fear has global import and concern. Broad in scope, yet fine in its particulars, this novel shouts: "Wake up. Look what's going on around you. And do something."Just be careful how you do it.