Devi S. Laskar's absorbing novel Midnight, at the War spotlights an international reporter facing personal, professional, and global conflicts.
In April 2001, Rita Das lands at her unnamed, predominantly Arabic-speaking destination, only ever referred to as "[--------]." Her recent marriage hasn't stopped her from taking far-flung assignments to devastated zones where she reports on "numbers stories" all the while sneaking in "more human interest stories" amid functional tallies. Time with her husband, Sebastian, hardly seems a priority; Rita still regularly seeks out her philandering former lover. She neglects even her most beloved bond, that with her mother: they have "an arrangement" that despite the return of her breast cancer, Mom "will not die until she becomes a grandmother." But when 9/11 happens just before she's scheduled to fly back to New York, Rita misses her opportunity to say goodbye to Mom at the hospital, and that loss further fractures an already tenuous relationship with her father.
Tragedies multiply within her intimate circle: her best friend's last appointment was at the World Trade Center, and a pair of journalist colleagues are kidnapped and tortured. She becomes pregnant, unsure who the father is, and claims an opportunity to escape to [--------], where distance, surrounded by danger and decimation, might finally offer Rita some semblance of clarity.
Throughout her multilayered narrative, former journalist Laskar (Atlas of Reds and Blues; Circa) deftly dovetails Rita's complicated backstory of race, culture, disconnects, and dysfunction, with the relentlessly unceasing headlines that have undoubtedly left the world numb. Through the tumult happening on the pages, Laskar distills an impressive novel filled with empathy, inspiration, and ultimately hope. --Terry Hong