In this monumental novel, Deni Ellis Béchard explores the personal impact of America’s imperial misadventures.

Kabul — 10 years after 9/11: When a car bomb explodes in a crowded part of the city, a Japanese-American journalist is shocked to discover that the vehicle’s passengers were acquaintances — three fellow ex-pats who had formed an unlikely love triangle. Alexandra was a Canadian human rights lawyer for imprisoned Afghan women. Justin was a born-again Christian from Louisiana who taught at a local school. Clay was an ex-soldier who worked as a private contractor. The car’s driver, Idris, one of Justin’s most promising pupils, is missing. Convinced the events that led to the fatal explosion weren’t random, the journalist is determined to uncover why these three people were targeted, and who is responsible.

In vivid and evocative prose, Deni Ellis Béchard brings to life the city of Kabul, along with the people who live there: the hungry, determined, and resourceful locals who are just as willing as their occupiers to reinvent themselves to survive.

DENI ELLIS BÉCHARD is the author of eight previous books of fiction and nonfiction, including Vandal Love, winner of the 2007 Commonwealth Writers Prize, and Into the Sun, winner of the 2016 Midwest Book Award for literary fiction and selected by CBC/Radio-Canada and one of the most important books to be read by Canada's political leadership. His work has received the Nautilus Book Award for Investigative Journalism and has been featured in Best Canadian Essays. He has reported from India, Cuba, Colombia, Iraq, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Afghanistan, and his writing has been published in dozens of newspapers and magazines, including Salon, the Los Angeles Times, the Paris Review, Pacific Standard, and Foreign Policy.

Deni Béchard's profile page

An insightful and affecting look into the lives of those who risk everything to help the people of Afghanistan and tell their stories.

Kirkus

Into the Sun, Béchard's latest novel, is a masterful blend of the best of long and short fiction techniques and proof of an exceptional imagination.

The Ottawa Review of Books

Béchard writes with a perfect balance of surgical prose and philosophical inquiry. . . . The action is gripping, but what really propels the narrative along is a simmering, growing tension. . . . a hell of a good story.

Globe and Mail

Daredevil journalists, amoral mercenaries, and assorted foreign do-gooders . . . Their stories are told vividly in [Into the Sun] by Deni Ellis Béchard.

Quill and Quire