The Small Boat Of Great Sorrows

'Hugely satisfying. This book has all the power of a great thriller, with the intelligence and humanity of the best serious fiction' Fergal Keane

'Dan Fesperman has written that rare thing: a fine and intelligent novel that makes you think, and keeps you turning the pages'

'Thoroughly recommended...Has the tang of someone writing with conviction, compassion and, above all, an understanding of the Balkans'

'Hugely satisfying. This book has all the power of a great thriller, with the humanity and intelligence of the best serious fiction'

'Gruelling, exciting, eventful...cleanly and crisply written, with a vein of sardonic asides'

is a reporter for the Baltimore Sun and worked in its Berlin bureau during the years of civil war in former Yugoslavia, as well as in Afghanistan during the recent conflict for the paper.  His first novel, Lie in the Dark, won the CWA John Creasey award for best first crime novel in 1999 and his second novel, The Small Boat of Great Sorrows, won the 2003 CWA Steel Dagger for Thriller of the Year. His new novel, The Warlord's Son is published by Bantam Press.

Vlado Petric, former detective in war-torn Sarajevo, has left his beloved homeland to join his wife and daughter in Germany, where he scratches a meagre living among the dust of former conflicts on the building sites of the new Berlin. 
Returning home one evening, he finds an enigmatic American investigator waiting for him in the small apartment he now shares with his wife and daughter. The investigator, Calvin Pine, works for the International War Crimes Tribunal, and he tells Petric that they want him to go to The Hague. It doesn't take Petric long to accept, especially when Pine tells him they are after a big fish: one of the men who they think is responsible for the terrible massacre of Srebrenica. 
 
What Petric doesn't know is that he is also being used as bait to lure into the open a murderer from the previous generation; a man whose activities in the Second World War makes the current generation of killers look like amateurs. 
As Petric travels from modern-day Germany, through the ruins of Bosnia, to the peaceful hills of southern Italy where bitter, unresolved tensions still crackle beneath the surface, the stakes become all too personal. And he soon finds that investigating the mysteries of the past can be every bit as dangerous as finding his way through the war zones of the present.

Dan Fesperman

'A new book by Dan Fesperman is becoming a major literary event ... Fesperman's experience as a war correspondent, together with his powers of description and characterisation, produce an utterly compelling thriller and quite simply the best book I've read all year'

'Almost alone in depicting the main theatre of war on terror, Fesperman proves equal to the challenge, producing impressive portraits of Peshawar and the mountainous borderlands'

'A terrific novel of intrigue, duplicity and death in the shadow of the Khyber Pass... Fesperman is that rare journalist who is also a gifted novelist...'The Warlord's Son' deserves the attention of anyone who is open to first-rate fiction about war, journalism and the dark, dangerous worlds called Pakistan and Afghanistan'

'Fesperman offers a level of cultural and political nuance not always found in adventure thrillers'

'...a gripping portrayal of shameless media frenzy and hopeless geopolitical gamesmanship... his detailed insider's account of war reporting will be catnip for news junkies'

'...bleak and gritty, but thoroughly believable'

'A first-rate geopolitical yarn... Fesperman combines his strong eye for detail with bleak film-noir cynicism'

'The violence level is high, and rendered so convincingly that at times I felt queasy.  Fortunately for introspective readers, the violence is leavened by searing insights into human nature... I knew I could not sleep until finishing it'

'...a convincing, accurate thriller...this book is worth reading if only for the passage where the hero, Skelly, glimpses Osama Bin Laden at a public hanging; the scene both convinces and frightens'

Dropping into the smoky chaos of Peshawar after 9/11, Skelly, a burned-out American foreign correspondent, discovers that to survive in Peshawar's swirling humanity he will need a 'fixer': a local man who speaks English, knows the area, and is a jack-of-all-trades who can both save his skin and take him to the action. And for journalists in Peshawar, the real action is in Afghanistan. 
 
Skelly chooses Najeeb, the banished son of a tribal warlord. Soon they are driving dusty roads westward in the shadowy wake of ex-Mujahadeen Mahmood Razaq, tipped to claim leadership of the next regime.Skelly's quest for the scoop of a lifetime means tracking down the one man the whole world is seeking. 
And Najeeb, torn by divided loyalties, must find the way for both of them, in a land where a single misstep - or lapse of trust - can prove fatal.

Dan Fesperman

Praise for The Warlord's Son

'A new book by Dan Fesperman is becoming a major literary event ... Fesperman's experience as a war correspondent, together with his powers of description and characterisation, produce an utterly compelling thriller ...

'Almost alone in depicting the main theatre of war on terror, Fesperman proves equal to the challenge, producing impressive portraits of Peshawar and the mountainous borderlands'

'A terrific novel of intrigue, duplicity and death in the shadow of the Khyber Pass... Fesperman is that rare journalist who is also a gifted novelist...'The Warlord's Son' deserves the attention of anyone who is op ...

'A new book by Dan Fesperman is becoming a major literary event ... Fesperman's experience as a war correspondent, together with his powers of description and characterisation, produce an utterly compelling thriller ...

'Almost alone in depicting the main theatre of war on terror, Fesperman proves equal to the challenge, producing impressive portraits of Peshawar and the mountainous borderlands'

'A terrific novel of intrigue, duplicity and death in the shadow of the Khyber Pass... Fesperman is that rare journalist who is also a gifted novelist...'The Warlord's Son' deserves the attention of anyone who is op ...

'A new book by Dan Fesperman is becoming a major literary event ... Fesperman's experience as a war correspondent, together with his powers of description and characterisation, produce an utterly compelling thriller ...

'Almost alone in depicting the main theatre of war on terror, Fesperman proves equal to the challenge, producing impressive portraits of Peshawar and the mountainous borderlands'

'A terrific novel of intrigue, duplicity and death in the shadow of the Khyber Pass... Fesperman is that rare journalist who is also a gifted novelist...'The Warlord's Son' deserves the attention of anyone who is op ...

Books by Dan Fesperman

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