Synopses & Reviews
Thirty years ago, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and journalist Philip Caputo crossed the deserts of Sudan and Eritrea on foot and camelback, a journey that inspired his first novel,
Horn of Africa, and awakened a lifelong fascination with Africa. His travels have since taken him back to Sudan, as well as to Kenya, Somalia, and Tanzania, and from those experiences he has fashioned
Acts of Faith, his most ambitious novel. A stunning and timely epic, it tells the stories of pilots, aid workers, missionaries, and renegades struggling to relieve the misery wrought by the civil war in Sudan.
The hearts of these men and women are in the right place, but as they plunge into a well of moral corruption for which they are ill-prepared, their hidden flaws conspire with circumstances to turn their strengths bravery, compassion, daring, and empathy into weaknesses. In pursuit of noble ends, they make ethical compromises; their altruism curdles into self-righteous zealotry and greed, entangling them in a web of conspiracies that leads, finally, to murder. A few, however, escape the moral trap and find redemption in the discovery that firm convictions can blind the best-intentioned man or woman to the difference between right and wrong.
Douglas Braithwaite, an American aviator who flies food and medicine to Sudan's ravaged south, is torn between his altruism and powerful personal ambitions. His partners are Fitzhugh Martin, a multiracial Kenyan who sees Sudan as a cause that can give purpose to his directionless life, and Wesley Dare, a hard-bitten bush pilot who is not as cynical as he thinks he is and sacrifices all for the woman he loves.
They are joined by two strong women: Quinette Hardin, an evangelical Christian from Iowa who liberates slaves captured by Arab raiders and who falls in love with a Sudanese rebel; and Diana Briggs, the daughter of a family with colonial roots in Africa, who believes that her love for her adopted continent might be enough to save it.
Pitted against them is Ibrahim Idris ibn Nur-el-Din, a fierce Arab warlord whose obsessive quest for an escaped concubine undermines his faith in the holy war he is waging against Sudan's southern blacks.
In a harsh yet alluring landscape, these and other vividly realized characters act out a drama of modern-day Africa. Grounded in the reality of today's headlines, Acts of Faith is a captivating novel of human complexity that combines seriousness with all the seductive pleasure of a masterly thriller.
Review
"In Acts of Faith Philip Caputo has fashioned a gripping cast of characters and placed them in a spellbinding story. You can't get any better than that." Winston Groom
Review
"Philip Caputo, from Vietnam onwards, has understood the hardest truths of the modern world better than almost anybody. Acts of Faith is a stunningly unflinching novel. On the surface it is set in Africa, but in fact its true landscape is the ravaged soul of the twenty-first century. Philip Caputo is one of the few absolutely essential writers at work today." Robert Olen Butler
Review
"This is a big novel, old fashioned in the best way, full of intrigue and a large cast of sharply drawn characters. And with a Sudan cease-fire recently in the news, it couldn't be timelier." Booklist
Review
"Acts of Faith offers an image of Africa deserving comparison with Conrad, Hemingway, Peter Matthiessen, and Jan de Hartog's forgotten near-masterpiece The Spiral Road." Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)
Review
"Caputo's devastating new novel...will be to the era of the Iraq war what Graham Greene's novel The Quiet American became to the Vietnam era." Michiko Kakutani, the New York Times
Review
"Philip Caputo's Sudan is a place drawn so real, dust and despair fall from the pages....So beautiful, so awful, so authentic, so wonderful, so hopeless, it grieves the heart." The Miami Herald
Review
"Destined to be a generation-defining book." St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Review
"A miracle....You can hardly conceive of a more affecting reading experience." Houston Chronicle
Review
"Philip Caputo is a splendid, muscular story teller who possesses the crucial power to make endearing ordinary men from diverse fragilities and stubborness." Gloria Emerson, Los Angeles Times
Review
"Caputo lets no one and nothing off the hook." Richard Bausch, Washington Post Book World
Synopsis
Philip Caputo's tragic and epically ambitious new novel is set in Sudan, where war is a permanent condition. Into this desolate theater come aid workers, missionaries, and mercenaries of conscience whose courage and idealism sometimes coexist with treacherous moral blindness. There's the entrepreneurial American pilot who goes from flying food and medicine to smuggling arms, the Kenyan aid worker who can't help seeing the tawdry underside of his enterprise, and the evangelical Christian who comes to Sudan to redeem slaves and falls in love with a charismatic rebel commander.
As their fates intersect and our understanding of their characters deepens, it becomes apparent that Acts of Faith is one of those rare novels that combine high moral seriousness with irresistible narrative wizardry.
Synopsis
From the Pulitzer prize-winning journalist, author of the highly praised novels The Voyage and Horn of Africa a stunning, timely new novel about the physical perils and moral crises faced by a group of men and women who try to relieve the suffering caused by war and famine in contemporary Sudan.
Douglas Braithwaite, an American aviator who flies medicine and food from Kenya to Sudan's ravaged south, feels himself beginning to take sides in the conflict. Flying with him: Wesley Dare, a hard-bitten bush pilot who sacrifices all for the woman he loves; Fitzhugh Martin, a multiracial Kenyan who sees Sudan as a cause with which he can rejuvenate his directionless life; Quinette Hardin, an evangelical Christian from Iowa working to buy slaves back from the Arab raiders, who falls in love with a Sudanese rebel; Diana Briggs, a daughter of a family with colonial roots in Africa, who believes that her love for her adopted continent might be enough to save it.
These and the other vividly realized characters who populate the blasted landscape of this riveting novel are unwitting combatants in the classic confrontation between Westerners and the third world. As they plunge into a well of moral corruption for which they are ill prepared, we see how their hidden flaws conspire with circumstances to turn their strengths bravery, compassion, daring, empathy into weakness, their altruism curdling into self-righteous zealotry and greed, leading them to conspiracy, and, finally, to murder. Grounded in the hard reality of today's headlines, Acts of Faith is a galvanizing novel.
Synopsis
Philip Caputos tragic and epically ambitious new novel is set in Sudan, where war is a permanent condition. Into this desolate theater come aid workers, missionaries, and mercenaries of conscience whose courage and idealism sometimes coexist with treacherous moral blindness. Theres the entrepreneurial American pilot who goes from flying food and medicine to smuggling arms, the Kenyan aid worker who cant help seeing the tawdry underside of his enterprise, and the evangelical Christian who comes to Sudan to redeem slaves and falls in love with a charismatic rebel commander.
As their fates intersect and our understanding of their characters deepens, it becomes apparent that Acts of Faith is one of those rare novels that combine high moral seriousness with irresistible narrative wizardry.
About the Author
Philip Caputo worked nine years for the Chicago Tribune and shared a Pulitzer Prize in 1972 for his reporting on election fraud in Chicago. He is the author of six other works of fiction and two memoirs, including A Rumor of War, about his service in Vietnam. He divides his time between Connecticut and Arizona.
Reading Group Guide
1. Acts of Faith opens with an interview with Fitzhugh Martin that takes place several years after the events recounted in the novel. How does this set the tone for the story that follows? What issues does it raise about the war in Sudan and the efforts, both military and humanitarian, to bring it to an end?
2. The meeting at Diana Briggss home [pp. 2132] brings to light various reasons for helping the rebels in the south. How would you characterize the positions taken by Diana, John Barrett, Douglas Braithwaite, and Fitzhugh Martin? Which argument is objectively the most persuasive? Which one carries the most emotional impact?
3. Barrett declares, Allah gives his stamp of approval to mass murder and describes the war as a continuation of the Crusades. The crescent versus the cross [p. 25]. Is his opinion justifiable on the basis of recent historical events, or does it represent a narrow-minded Western view of Islam? Is it possible to separate religion and politics in Sudan and other places torn by conflicts among different ethnic or religious groups?
4. What first impression does Douglas Braithwaite make? What qualities does he project that lead Fitzhugh to say, There was something about the American that made you not want to let him down [p. 32]? Are any of Douglass less attractive qualities apparent at this first meeting?
5. Wesley Dare observes, it was faith in some particular creed, sect, ideology, cause, or crusade [p. 34] that spurred the violence he has witnessed over twenty-five years as a bush pilot. Fitzhugh talks about the calm of an abiding conviction of the evangelical missionaries and wishes he too had some sort of inner resource that he could draw on [p. 58]. How do their differing views of faith affect their feelings about Douglas and their willingness to follow his lead?
6. Do the acts of faith in the novel necessarily lead to negative consequences? Are there characters whose actions demonstrate that abiding convictions can motivate heroic behavior and express basic human decency in the face of the unspeakable?
7. What does the conversation between Tara and Douglas [pp. 7072] reveal about the strengths and weaknesses of the Americans approach to crisis situations? What realities does Tara recognize that Douglas refuses to accept? Are there times as the story unfolds that Douglass direct manner and almost childlike candor bring to light moral imperatives that the other characters seem to ignore?
8. In contemplating the history of Sudan, Fitzhugh says, What was it about this place that created visionaries of all kinds, warrior-prophets and warrior-saints, messiahs true and false? . . . Was Tara right in saying that Sudans distances conjure up mirages of the mind, its boundless horizons inspiring men to imagine that anything is possible? . . . And what is it about this place that even as it molds true believers out of its native clay, it also draws true believers from elsewhere? [p. 104105]. Is there a basic truth in this poetic, even spiritual, view of Sudan? How much of a countrys personality stems from its history and geography? Can an argument be made that nineteenth-century European imperialism in Africa was, at least in part, an expression of optimism and hope rather than simply a drive for economic and political dominance?
9. Several of the chapters focusing on Quinette are titled Redeemer. On one level this refers to her job of liberating slaves captured by Arab raiders. What else does it suggest about Quinettes motivations for being in Sudan, about the character of her faith, and about her eventual willingness to cross the line between good works and illegal activities? What events bring to light the ambiguous nature of her devotion to the humanitarian and religious causes with which she is involved?
10. What role does Phyllis, the CNN reporter, play in the novel? Is she a foil for the others, especially Quinette? Does she represent the cynicism of the press? Or does she represent a viable ethicalor politicalposition in her own right?
11. Both Wesley [pp. 173 and 405, for example] and Fitzhugh [pp. 261 and 457] are well aware of Douglass faults, yet they choose to ignore them. Which man is clearer and more consistent about his reasons for staying with Knight Air? Does this give his arguments a greater moral weight?
12. Douglas and Quinette embody many of the characteristics thought of as typically American, from their enthusiastic, can-do style to their dangerous naïveté and self-righteous arrogance. How does Caputo keep them from becoming stereotypes? Do his descriptions of their backgrounds, for example, make them more sympathetic characters? What effect do the decisions they make at the end of the novel have on your feelings about each of them? Do they to some extent redeem themselves?
13. The chapters about Ibrahim Idris provide an unusual perspective on Islamic history and politics in Africa. What parallels are there between the aspirations of both sides in the conflict? Is Caputo evenhanded in describing the faultsas well as the idealsof each side? Did these chapters change your understanding of the upheavals taking place in much of the Muslim world today?
14. There are three love affairs at the heart of Acts of Faith: the relationships between Quinette Hardin and Michael Goraende, Wesley Dare and Mary English, and Fitzhugh Martin and Diana Briggs. How does each relationship represent an act of faith? Which of these unlikely alliances is the most credible? Are any of the characters completely honest with themselvesand with their loversabout the reasons for their romantic attachments? What ulterior, perhaps even unconscious, motives might you ascribe to each of them?
15. Michiko Kakutani calls Acts of Faith a parable about American excursions abroad and the dangers of missionary zeal, a Conradian tale about idealism run amok, greed sold as paternalistic benevolence, ignorance described as compassion (The New York Times, May 3, 2005). How accurately does the book portray the failure of humanitarian efforts around the world, both by the UN and by private agencies? Does it present a convincing portrait of the way America is perceived today?
16. Philip Caputos best-known book, A Rumor of War, is a memoir of his experiences as a soldier in Vietnam and a meditation on what war does to ordinary soldiers. To what extent can Acts of Faith be seen as a return toor a continuation ofthe questions explored in that book? Why has Caputo, a journalist who covered the wars in Sudan, chosen to write a novel rather than a nonfiction account of what he saw?
“Devastating. . . .
Acts of Faith will be to the era of the Iraq war what Graham Greenes novel
The Quiet American became to the Vietnam era. . . . Powerful.” —
The New York Times The introduction, discussion questions, suggestions for further reading, and author biography that follow are designed to enhance your groups discussion of Philip Caputos Acts of Faith. Set in war-torn Sudan, masterfully plotted and packed with suspense, the novel draws readers into the center of a devastating war and into the hearts and minds of the people confronting choices that challenge their most basic moral, political, and religious beliefs. It is an unflinching portrait of good intentions corrupted and idealism tarnished by the horrific reality of death and destruction.
Author Q&A
A Conversation with Philip Caputo author of
Acts of Faith
Q: Thirty years ago you crossed the deserts of Sudan in a trip that inspired your novel Horn of Africa. How much time have you spent in Africa since and what inspired you to revisit Africa in Acts of Faith?
A: Several months altogether, spread over time. There was a gap of 25 years between my trip to Sudan and Eritrea and my next visit to sub-Saharan Africa in 2000, when I went to Kenya on an assignment for National Geographic Adventure magazine. A year later, for the same publication, I returned to Kenya to cover the airlift of humanitarian aid into southern Sudan. In the course of that assignment, I also flew into Somalia with bush pilots who were delivering both aid and khat to that country, an interesting juxtaposition of missions. Dope on the morning flight, food, water, and clothes in the afternoon. Well before I arrived in Lokichokio, the Kenyan border town that is headquarters for the UN-sponsored airlift (which was dubbed Operation Lifeline Sudan), Id heard rumors that some aid pilots and non-governmental organizations were smuggling arms and ammunition to the Sudanese rebels, disguising the shipments as humanitarian assistance. I was able to confirm the rumors. Representatives from one European NGO, which shall remain nameless, told me how they concealed AK-47 assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers in deliveries of non-lethal aid. Two pilots showed me videos of their planes bringing in tons of mortar and small-arms ammunition. They would fly out of Lokichokio with empty or partially-loaded aircraft, giving false flight plans to the UN authorities at the airfield, then land at clandestine airstrips in Sudan, pick up the weapons, and fly on to rebel base areas. It was supposed to be very hush-hush, and I was made to understand that I ought to keep this information to myself. Of course, as a journalist, I could not do that, and told my sources that I could not. The story appeared in the December, 2001 issue of National Geographic Adventure, and was the inspiration for Acts of Faith.
Q: What kind of research and personal experiences informs this novel?
A: Some of my personal experiences, as described above, went into the writing of the novel, considerably transformed by my imagination. I flew in C-130s on airdrops over Sudan, in planes contracted by independent NGOs on other aid missions. Because Sudan is an immense country and its civil war a complicated conflict, relying on first-hand experiences alone would have required me to spend not weeks or months but possibly years in the country. That was impossible. Therefore, I did a lot of research, interviewing around twenty people aid workers, pilots, rebel leaders, Sudanese civilians, and UN officials. I also read roughly thirty books about Sudan, most in their entirety, some in part.
Q: Douglas, Wesley, Fitzhugh, Quinette, Diana and the whole cast of characters are so fully realized it seems they must be in some ways modeled on real people you have encountered in your travels. Without naming names of course, were any of them inspired by people you know?
A: To somewhat arbitrarily assign percentages, I would say that Douglas, Quinette, and Diana are 90 percent imagined and ten percent modeled on real people. With Wesley and Fitzhugh, the split might be closer to fifty-fifty. To expand on this a bit, Quinette was born wholly out of my imagination. In my original conception of Acts of Faith, I had her falling in love with, and eventually marrying, Douglas. I was perhaps 50 pages into an early draft when, in the notes and journal I had kept in Sudan, I came across a story a source had told me about Emma McCune, a young, aristocratic British woman who had married Riek Machar, who had been second in command of the Sudanese rebel forces. It occurred to me that my American, non-aristocratic Quinette would be more likely to fall for a Sudanese rebel officer than she would for Douglas, and that this would make a more satisfying story. And so I changed her lover from Douglas to Lt. Col. Goraende.
Q: The level of misery wrought by the war and famine in Sudan is so unbelievably difficult for westerners to comprehend. Was it a challenge to try and convey the complicated politics and history of the region?
A: Challenging would be an understatement. It would have been much easier if I had been writing nonfiction, but it was very hard to explain Sudans tangled politics and history, which were central to the novels action, in a way that avoided over-simplification, made things clear to the reader, and satisfied the demands of art. I did not want my research to show. As much as possible, I tried to steer clear of writing expository passages or disguising exposition as dialogue. The information had to be woven, seamlessly, I hoped, into the narrative fabric. I must have rewritten some pages and paragraphs a dozen times or more before they sounded right.
Q: There have been so many grand scale tragedies in Africa and yet it seems they have never gotten the kind of attention in the U.S. that they merit. Why do you think that is?
A: The conventional wisdom would answer, Racism. I dont think so. If racism were the reason for the lack of attention you allude to, why have so many African-American politicians, commentators and civil rights leaders been as inclined to ignore or to give short shrift to Africas plight as whites? To my mind, there are two explanations: one is realpolitik Africa is not, or at least is not seen to be, central to Americas vital interests; two is more or less emotional Africa's problems (endless tribal/ethnic conflicts, pervasive corruption, AIDS, and horrendous leaders) seem intractable, breeding a kind of despair in people who would like to help Africans resolve these issues but cannot see how. For that reason, I deeply admire former Senator and UN ambassador John Danforth, who spent an enormous amount of time and effort helping to broker the armistice agreement in Sudan that was signed only a few weeks ago. He did the damn near impossible.
Q: The idea of exile, of strangers in a strange place, has recurred throughout your work. The characters in Acts of Faith are drawn to Africa for different reasonsgreed, opportunity, adventure, idealism. What is it about people out of their home territory and caught up in forces beyond their control, that fascinates you as a writer?
A: As we used to say in Vietnam, This is where you find out who you are. Most people spend their lives in what is commonly called their comfort zone. They fashion personas for themselves, which they presume to be their true characters, sets of attitudes, which they presume reflect their deepest beliefs, and modes of behavior, which they presume express their morals. Seldom are their presumptive characters, beliefs and personal morals put to the test. They might be compared to vessels that sail only in calm, safe waters. It has been my experience that when people are taken out of their comfort zones, whether voluntarily or by circumstances beyond their control, and placed in strange environments or in alien situations, they discover if their self image is what they have thought it to be. It has also been my experience, alas, that these epiphanies are as often as not unflattering, revealing hidden flaws and weaknesses. You find out that youre not as brave, compassionate, or smart as you had believed. Sometimes, however, you find resources of strength you hadnt realized were there. As a writer, I am a student of human nature, so this process of self-discovery under stress fascinates me.
Q: Is it possible to do good in a place seemingly without a moral compass?
A: By without a moral compass I assume you mean places or situations where the moral guideposts are absent, where the boundaries between right and wrong are not clearly surveyed, so to speak. Yes, it is quite possible to do good in such places, such circumstances, but it isnt easy. The one doing the good, or trying to, must have a sound character and guard against the passions that could lead him or her to do bad in the name of doing good. Thats what happens to some of the main characters in Acts of Faith. They take sides, become partisans, and end up contributing to the suffering and destruction they had initially set out to relieve.
Q: While this novel is clearly informed by much research, it is also a thrilling page turning adventure and love story(s). What are the challenges in constructing a novel that is both informative and timely and yet also entertaining?
A: The challenge is to remember that you are creating narrative art, not the written version of a TV docu-drama. The Elizabethan poet, Sir Philip Sydney, said the object of poetry is to delight and instruct. That is the purpose of all literature, but I think emphasis should be laid on delight. Maybe compel or engage would be a better word. The reader is going to be more engaged by a character and his or her story, less by information about a place or an event. I should also mention that Acts of Faith is not a book for anyone who wants to learn about contemporary Sudan. It is not, because it was not intended to be, a documentary thinly disguised as fiction. Yes, I tried for a feeling of verisimilitude, I tried to give an accurate impression of the place and the civil war, but the novel is by no means factually accurate. It is a work of the imagination based on fact.