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Acts of Faith
by Caputo, Philip
- Used
- Hardcover
- Signed
- first
- Condition
- Collectible - Near Fine/Fine
- ISBN 10
- 0375411666
- ISBN 13
- 9780375411663
- Seller
-
Argillite, Kentucky, United States
Item Price
£39.74£35.76
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005. 1st Edition. Hardcover_vinylspine. Collectible - Near Fine/Fine. 6.75"x9.5"x1.5". 669 pgs. SIGNED BY AUTHOR. Rust boards. Black vinyl spine w/silver letters. Jacket illustration by Robert Lyons; (plane inset) Bettmann/Corbis. Jacket design by Gabriele Wilson. Author photo by Jerry Bauer. Spine slight slant to left, binding tight, pages clean and bright. Not x-library, unclipped, unmarked. "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 comes to Sudan to redeem slaves and falls in love with a charismatic rebel commander." Goodreads 3.93.
Synopsis
Thirty years ago, Pulitzer Prize--winning author and journalist Philip Caputo crossed the deserts of Sudan and Eritrea on foot and camelback, a journey that inspired his first novel, Horn of Africa, and awakened a lifelong fascination with Africa. His travels have since taken him back to Sudan, as well as to Kenya, Somalia, and Tanzania, and from those experiences he has fashioned Acts of Faith, his most ambitious novel. A stunning and timely epic, it tells the stories of pilots, aid workers, missionaries, and renegades struggling to relieve the misery wrought by the civil war in Sudan.The hearts of these men and women are in the right place, but as they plunge into a well of moral corruption for which they are ill-prepared, their hidden flaws conspire with circumstances to turn their strengths--bravery, compassion, daring, and empathy--into weaknesses. In pursuit of noble ends, they make ethical compromises; their altruism curdles into self-righteous zealotry and greed, entangling them in a web of conspiracies that leads, finally, to murder. A few, however, escape the moral trap and find redemption in the discovery that firm convictions can blind the best-intentioned man or woman to the difference between right and wrong.Douglas Braithwaite, an American aviator who flies food and medicine to Sudan's ravaged south, is torn between his altruism and powerful personal ambitions. His partners are Fitzhugh Martin, a multiracial Kenyan who sees Sudan as a cause that can give purpose to his directionless life, and Wesley Dare, a hard-bitten bush pilot who is not as cynical as he thinks he is and sacrifices all for the woman he loves.They are joined by two strong women: Quinette Hardin, an evangelical Christian from Iowa who liberates slaves captured by Arab raiders and who falls in love with a Sudanese rebel; and Diana Briggs, the daughter of a family with colonial roots in Africa, who believes that her love for her adopted continent might be enough to save it.Pitted against them is Ibrahim Idris ibn Nur-el-Din, a fierce Arab warlord whose obsessive quest for an escaped concubine undermines his faith in the holy war he is waging against Sudan's southern blacks.In a harsh yet alluring landscape, these and other vividly realized characters act out a drama of modern-day Africa. Grounded in the reality of today's headlines, Acts of Faith is a captivating novel of human complexity that combines seriousness with all the seductive pleasure of a masterly thriller. From the Hardcover edition.
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Details
- Bookseller
- Blacks Bookshop
(US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 10338
- Title
- Acts of Faith
- Author
- Caputo, Philip
- Format/Binding
- Hardcover_vinylspine
- Book Condition
- Used - Collectible - Near Fine
- Jacket Condition
- Fine
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Edition
- 1st Edition
- Binding
- Hardcover
- ISBN 10
- 0375411666
- ISBN 13
- 9780375411663
- Publisher
- Alfred A. Knopf
- Place of Publication
- New York
- Date Published
- 2005
Terms of Sale
Blacks Bookshop
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About the Seller
Blacks Bookshop
Biblio member since 2021
Argillite, Kentucky
About Blacks Bookshop
A little country book shop nestled in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains along the banks of the East Fork of Little Sandy River.
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Tight
- Used to mean that the binding of a book has not been overly loosened by frequent use.
- X-Library
- A former library book, generally containing library acquisition and ownership stamped markings, and other typical indications of...
- Jacket
- Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...
- Spine
- The outer portion of a book which covers the actual binding. The spine usually faces outward when a book is placed on a shelf....
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