A Door in the Earth - Rilegato

"A teeming panoply...layers moving storytelling onto penetrating reportage...bravely situated in Afghanistan itself, eroding the myth of the good occupier...Waldman is particularly gifted at giving tangible reality to ethical dilemmas...Few contemporary authors have shown so expertly that well-intentioned intervention can be the most dangerous kind of all...A Door in the Earth makes a persuasive case for the novel as a powerful source of insight into our moral limitations. In an age when we're tempted by Google and social media to believe we know more than we do, that insight is perhaps more valuable than ever."―Lara Feigel, New York Times Book Review

"Waldman has crafted a story that doesn't shrink from moral ambiguity and difficult questions."―Joumana Khatib, New York Times, 11 New Books to Watch For in August

"In her illuminating second novel, Waldman unpeels layers of cultural conditioning to explore the American use of 'kind power.'"―BBC, Ten Books to Read This August

"Amy Waldman's penetrating second novel speaks truth to power."―Leigh Haber, O, The Oprah Magazine

"Waldman writes about the clash of cultures and ideals with clean-lined grace and quiet eye-level empathy."―Entertainment Weekly

"A Door in the Earth is written with the precision of a journalist, and the narrative structure of a born novelist."―Elena Nicolaou, Refinery 29

"Through a kaleidoscope of shifting perspectives, Waldman delivers a breathtaking and achingly nuanced examination of the grays in a landscape where black and white answers have long been the only currency. A bone-chilling takedown of America's misguided use of soft power."―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Waldman is an ingenious and probing situational novelist . . . In this deeply well-informed, utterly engrossing, mischievously disarming, and stealthily suspenseful tale of slow and painful realizations, she hits the mark over and over again . . . Every aspect of this complex and caustic tale of hype and harm is saturated with insight and ruefulness as Parveen wises up and Waldman considers womanhood and choice, literacy and translation, hubris and lies, unintended consequences, and the devastating chaos of war."―Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)

"Waldman returns [after The Submission] with an even more ambitious novel, A Door in the Earth, which proves to be as politically provocative and challenging as its predecessor. Drawing on her years based in Afghanistan, she takes readers deep into the heart of the country, transporting us to a remote and largely unremarkable village, ringed by mountains far from the ongoing military conflicts that make headlines overseas . . . A Door in the Earth is a deeply chilling, multifaceted examination of not just the situation in Afghanistan but also the more pernicious and complex consequences of awakening the sleeping giant that is America and receiving its attentions--whether benevolent or not. Waldman plays out Newton's third law of motion on the human scale, demonstrating that for every action, there is always an equal and opposite reaction. As [her protagonist] Parveen learns a little too late, 'There is no such thing as an innocuous interaction: there were always repercussions, always collateral damage, for others.'"―Stephenie Harrison, Bookpage (starred review)

"With A Door in the Earth, Amy Waldman more than confirms the great talent that she showed in her first novel, The Submission. A Door in the Earth plays on true events in Afghanistan -- a country Waldman knows well from her career as a journalist -- but wholly reimagines them in a way that raises urgent questions about the ethics of 'saving' people we don't know. I haven't read anything more acute about the consequences of good American intentions sent abroad. Waldman's moral vision, spare and unsparing prose style, and feel for the way history upsets settled lives all make A Door in the Earth one of the essential books of the post-9/11 era."―George Packer, National Book Award winner for The Unwinding

Amy Waldman's first novel, The Submission, was a national bestseller, a PEN/Hemingway Award finalist, and the #1 Book of the Year for Entertainment Weekly and Esquire. A former bureau chief for The New York Times and national correspondent for The Atlantic as well as a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute and the American Academy in Berlin, she lives with her family in Brooklyn.