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497th out of 657 books
—
507 voters
Acts of Faith
by
Philip Caputo (Goodreads Author)
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 arm...more
Paperback, 688 pages
Published
May 9th 2006
by Vintage
(first published 2005)
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The compactness of this paperback format is deceptive; this book has an epic plot spanning years of political turmoil, an expansive cast that repeatedly sends you to the front of the book to refer back to the dramatis personae, and sometimes, just way too much going on.
Nonetheless, Caputo just barely manages this huge effort - a bunch of people jockey for contracts to fly relief aid to the Sudan. Whether it's profiteering or not is a theme; so is the benevolent paternalism many of the characters...more
Nonetheless, Caputo just barely manages this huge effort - a bunch of people jockey for contracts to fly relief aid to the Sudan. Whether it's profiteering or not is a theme; so is the benevolent paternalism many of the characters...more
May 06, 2007
John Sherman
rated it
3 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
Those who enjoyed What is the What by Dave Eggers
This is a great book to read in conjunction with Eggers' What is the What. Both are set in Sudan and both focus on the conflict between the Sudan's Muslim / Arab population and its southern black population. While Eggers' book focuses on the refugees of the conflict, Caputo in "Acts of Faith" spends most of his time telling the stories of aid workers who help the tribes in southern Sudan. With the current conflict in Darfur, this is an excellent book to read to learn more about the country and i...more
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“Do you suppose war to be here what wars are elsewhere?”… “Do you suppose that it is an event, with a discrete beginning that will proceed to a discrete middle und so weiter on to a discrete end? No! It is a condition of life, like drought. There is war in Sudan because there is war.”
“Like Vietnam?” Douglas murmured. “We’re here because we’re here because we’re here.”
Manfred’s gaze passed from the American’s face to his boots, then back up again. “I have no idea what you are talking about.”
___
Ac...more
“Like Vietnam?” Douglas murmured. “We’re here because we’re here because we’re here.”
Manfred’s gaze passed from the American’s face to his boots, then back up again. “I have no idea what you are talking about.”
___
Ac...more
I really enjoyed this book. Perhaps because I saw such gritty truth in the characters, and it didn't hurt that I recognized the real-life people that many of these characters were based on. As Americans (and the world) slowly begin to rethink and evaluate our methods of aid, development, and peace-building, novels such as this one become quite helpful. While political and economic commentaries can give you the raw data behind the exploding Aid Business (see:
or
) , Caputo's words give you th...more
or
) , Caputo's words give you th...more
This long but rewarding book is not particularly well written, but it's a compelling story (or set of stories), with complex characters dealing with a set of important issues. Most of the main characters are involved in providing aid to Sudan, plus two characters directly involved in the conflict, one a Muslim tribal headman who fights on the side of the government, and a nominally Christian rebel leader. All of the characters act out of some kind of faith, even if it's a secular faith. Most are...more
Critics gave kudos to the author for writing a big, sprawling, old-fashioned novel with diverse characters and serious moral themes. Caputo has painted a portrait of Africa that avoids stereotype or clich_
It pains me to give a ho-hum review to a novel that was clearly so dear to the heart of the author; "Acts of Faith" must've been a labor of love for Philip Caputo...sadly, what mostly is conveyed is the labor and not the love (at least to this reader).
I've never read a book so exasperating to read...often I was riveted AND bored at the same time. The core story is quite interesting: The world of humanitarian aid to Sudan during wartime and famine (as told by several different characters behind...more
I've never read a book so exasperating to read...often I was riveted AND bored at the same time. The core story is quite interesting: The world of humanitarian aid to Sudan during wartime and famine (as told by several different characters behind...more
This was a loaner from Dad to start the year. Intense. A very "current" book, I don't think the situation in Africa has changed much since it was published - and obviously can be read as a microcosm of aid organizations and the intricacies of working with them, both good and bad, worldwide. This really makes you ponder your own view of things. At what point does "helping" turn into "hurting"? And vice versa? When can you (or when would you) excuse morally questionable actions based on their (pre...more
Philip Caputo’s “Acts of Faith” is an impressive read, at once both ponderous and pleasing. With small type and almost 700 pages, it takes a bit of commitment, but the reward is there. The narrative is dense and complex, with a score of different characters making an appearance and a number of themes playing through the storyline. Mercenaries, missionaries, profiteers, and humanitarians coalesce in this story, each acting through their own belief system. While all makes sense in the end, it take...more
Feb 08, 2009
Kappy
is currently reading it
It took a while to get into, but now I'm hooked. I'm reading this one very slowly. It's my treadmill book at the gym and it has been for several months now. Shows ya how often I've been going to the gym. Still, I'm a slow reader especially while bouncing up and down on the treadmill. I can't go too fast. Now they put up big screen TV that distract me more; guess I'll have to give up my favorite machine and find a spot w/o TVs. Back to the book...... It's interesting to me cause my husband is int...more
Amazing amazing book about aid workers in modern day Africa, primarily Kenya and Sudan. It’s about bush pilots delivering aid for both the U.N. and NGO’s with a colorful cast of characters you grow to love and hate. It’s about missionaries bringing Christianity to the tribes in south Sudan. It’s about the civil war in Sudan, the Arab Muslims and the tribes in the south of Sudan. It’s about two narcissistic, self-righteous Americans (Quinette and Douglas) and the ruin and pain they create in thei...more
Powerful intense novel about Sudan and people caught up in conflict. Loved this book. Characters are very real and complex and I got really good insight into whats going on in Sudan because the story is laid out so well. Try Beating Heart if you want a similar take on the struggles and power games closer to home, in the U.S. Theyre obviously different on many levels, but both books had a strong handle on faith, power, politics, people who want to do the right thing and end up messing up, or real...more
This book was a disappointment overall. Give it a 2.5. I almost gave it a 3 but I don't know if I can say I liked it. It was sort of a love/hate relationship. I wanted to read it because of the Sudan setting which I wanted to learn more about. I know it was well-researched. I did learn quite a bit about the struggles there and in other parts of Africa. However, partway through it startd to deteriorate into a soap opera. The characters were colorful and interesting as one might expect in Africa....more
This book is on my list of books that should be required reading for everyone. I had no idea what I was getting into when I started the first paragraph. The book deftly weaves a web of characters into their surrounding landscape. There are no "good" guys and "bad" guys, but people making difficult decisions in a brutal land. These are well fleshed out characters that grow and change as they interact with each other and the politics of the country. This is a fiction book that could have easily be...more
I debated between a 3 and a 4 rating on this book. I liked the story but at times found the writing amateurish (or cheesy - like a Clive Cussler novel, specifically some of the dialogue and love scenes). I'd say it's a 3.5. The story is complex and compelling. I found the premise and details mostly believable (not having lived in Sudan as an aid worker, it's not as if I'd know if it wasn't, but I thought Caputo's depiction of Sudan's turbulence and hardship was one of the book's main strengths)....more
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 come...more
A really frustrating read. Some of the plotting is great, and while the geopolitics are at times heavy-handed, they are believable and not grafted on; they're the core of the story. But oy! the writing. And oof! the characters. And, oh no! where is the editor?! This book does way too much telling, and not enough showing, and some of the prose is simply embarrassing (e.g.: "He'd never been made love to as he was that afternoon.") At half the length, it might have been worth my time, but as it was...more
An extremely slow, detailed look at the plight of 4 different characters and their lives in war-torn Sudan. Quinette first goes as a missionary, but becomes the first wife to an SPLA commander. Douglas feigns to be a philanthropic business owner whose downfall is one he promised would never happen. Pilot Wes loses everything right when it looked like it couldn't go wrong. Fitzhugh, the had-been soccer phenom, journeys from idealistic hot-head, to Doug's right-hand man, to plotter and giver of Af...more
From Publishers Weekly
...more
Starred Review. Caputo's ambitious adventure novel, set against a backdrop of the Sudanese wars, makes for a dense, riveting update on Graham Greene's The Quiet American. The American in this case is Douglas Braithwaite, a "mercenary with a conscience" who founds Knight Air, a charter airline that conveys relief supplies from NGOs to war-torn southern Sudan. Braithwaite launches his service by flying aid to the Nuba, a region in the northern Sudanese sphere of influence t
This book is about the struggles in the Sudan. It painted a convincing picture of how the UN is mucking up things with their certain protocols and this leaves Non Government Orgs (NGO's) to just take the initiative and use illegal plane charter company's to ship in relief to these ravaged Non-Muslims living in the South. It goes through the intricacies of their work and how greed is the driving force behind their humanitarian work. This Greed then destroys relationships and jeopardizes the wellb...more
This book didn't give me what I was hoping for to get. I bought it because I thought I will learn something, but I didn't. It gave me that cinema feeling of Africa, when you feel nostalgic and naive about something that you think it is how it is, and then turns out that it isn't at all what you thought it would be. I was hoping it would be great, but it wasn't. I loved the end of this book but it made me feel again like I feel every time when I watch Meryl Streep and Robert Redford. I feel a nee...more
This is a sweeping masterwork in which Africa is the central character. The characters include a mixed race, UN bureaucrat, a ladies man, who falls in love with the much older, white, wealthy, colonial woman, an American entrepreneur, a daredevil pilot who seeks to earn his fortune and transport supplies to the neediest and least served in Sudan, a young American missionary who falls in love with and ultimately marries a tribal leader, a corrupt local businessman. Africa, in this accounting, is...more
Strong start as real life/well researched story shifts (Caputo seems to have an understanding of Africa) to mediocre soap opera, finishes stronger than middle but not as good as beginning.
I had a love/blah relationship with this book. Started out slow, but got into the politics/culture of Sudan, the UN, relief agencies... and if you would like almost journalistic account of the conflict in southern Sudan and nuts-bolts of the politics and the NGO's involved, the first part of the book was GREAT...more
I had a love/blah relationship with this book. Started out slow, but got into the politics/culture of Sudan, the UN, relief agencies... and if you would like almost journalistic account of the conflict in southern Sudan and nuts-bolts of the politics and the NGO's involved, the first part of the book was GREAT...more
At nearly 700 pages, this novel is a hefty read. But it's worth the effort for the rich characters and the musing on the outcome of deeply held convictions (the "faith" of the title), be they religious, altruistic, or romantic. The author turns too often to odd-couple romantic pairings, but I was willing to forgive the overuse of this plot device because I found the characters so interesting.
This book covers, in graphic detail, war in the Sudan, including the aftermath of bombings, hand-to-hand...more
This book covers, in graphic detail, war in the Sudan, including the aftermath of bombings, hand-to-hand...more
Hmm, I thought I wrote a review of this one back when I read it, but it doesn't seem to be here now. Well, I heard about it from other folks who know Sudan well and recognized the characters for the real people they are based on. I read the last half in one long jet-lagged night shortly after arriving in Khartoum. I liked the different story lines, when one got a little tedious it would switch to another. It didn't feel much to me like the Sudan that I've experienced, but I guess that's because...more
Another very interesting book about good and evil and international foreign aid and do-gooding on the African Continent. The book illustrates how the definitions of good and evil (and God and the Devil) are often the same, no matter how hard we try to differentiate them. In many situations, the definitions of good and evil are in the eye of the beholder, regardless of how much we would like them to be absolute and clearly "white and black."
Acts of Faith asks the question, is "Aid" providing food...more
Acts of Faith asks the question, is "Aid" providing food...more
Amazing book set during Sudan's recent Civil War. It's about non-UN relief organizations that fly assistance to southern Sudan, even though Sudan's government is against it. The characters are amazing, and the story is incredibly moving. It's hard to read at times because it's based in the reality of what was going on during the war, and I suspect it accurately reflects what is still going on in war torn regions of Africa.
I learned SO MUCH about Sudan and Eastern Africa from this book. It was so well-researched and believable--full of really well-drawn characters and a very inticate plot that you really had to pay attention to. Quinette fascinated me--she was definitely my favorite character. I loved getting to know people from all sides of the conflict, though of course there was much more time spent on the "Western" characters. The only reason that I gave this book 3 stars rather than 4 was that despite how muc...more
This book took me an exceptionally long time to read (one month!), but I relished every word and embraced every lesson from this heroic effort of modern fiction. As much as it fed my current obsession with the Sudan, it also nourished my internal debate of good versus evil and my search for truth and goodness within humankind. Will you find it here? You'll have to ask the baker's daughter.
It's a novel, but firmly rooted in the surreal realities of modern-day Sudan. Caputo, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, wrote it after being on assignment for National Geographic Adventure magazine. He did a phenomenal job of capturing the Sudanese dynamic, including the strange reverberations set in motion by well-meaning if uncritical FBOs and NGOs. It's a great read, too.
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American author and journalist. Best-known for
A Rumor of War
, a best-selling memoir of his experiences during the Vietnam War.
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“Belief is a virus, and once it gets into you, its first order of business is to preserve itself, and the way it preserves itself is to keep you from having any doubts, and the way it keeps you from doubting is to blind you to the way things really are. Evidence contrary to the belief can be staring you straight in the face, and you won't see it... True believers just don't see things the way they are, because if they did, they wouldn't be true believers anymore.”
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