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SAVIORS



Saviors
Copyright © 1998
by Paul Eggers
Harcourt Brace

Once in a rare while a novel comes along that succeeds in taking us away from home in order to show us what it means to be American. The saviors of this brilliantly witty and wise novel set in a Vietnamese refugee camp off the coast of Malaysia are, among others, a pair of contrasting Americans: the outsized, outrageous, and highly opinionated Reuben Gill, and a thoughtful, diplomatic woman named Bobbie Porkpie Sortini.
Like a feudal kingdom, the refugee camp on the island of Bidong has a law of its own that occasionally takes note of the Vietnamese but usually ignores their needs and natures. The island is home to an array of unpredictable characters — Gurmit Singh, a Sikh in charge of Bidong who is woefully in over his head; a Malaysian police captain with a power base all his own; a variety of self-important refugee workers; and, of course, the Vietnamese. Faced with this odd collection of people and the imminent decision of whether or not to close the camp, it is no wonder that Reuben and Porkpie find themselves fomenting rebellion.
Gently but firmly, Paul Eggers draws us into one of the world's most recent hearts of darkness. He writes with a lyricism rooted in the mud and smell of a refugee camp, an authenticity that can come only from personal acquaintance with such a life, and a sense of humor that can come only from surviving the experience. An antic combination of Graham Greene's The Comedians and Catch-22, Saviors is about the lure of the exotic, the clash of cultures, and the struggle between power and love.
Wow! What a debut! Eggers is a masterful writer, and this book positions him to joing the ranks of Maugham and Forster and Conrad, Paul Theroux and Norman Rush. Saviors is as funny as Twain and as dark as Stone. I gulped it down, amazed by the deftness of Eggers's style. Saviors is an enormously accomplished and entertaining novel....[I] wouldn't be surprised if this novel ends up being short-listed for all the major prizes. — Bob Shacochis
Paul Eggers seems to have learned from someone that the novelist is allowed to think, so bravo! This is a serious (i.e., not trivial), searching, painful first novel by someone as daring as he is well-informed. — Paul West
Saviors is never anything but spirited, funny and, if such a word can be used, wise. It is a lovely book, keenly perceived, original and wonderful to read. Saviors is not only a moving and entertaining novel, but also one that brings us closer to an understanding of just how the human spirit operates in the face of adversity. — Craig Nova
Maybe a book can't save the world, but it can give us real insight into what inspires people to try and, all too often, dooms them to fail. By turns elegiac, comic, personal, and political, Saviors is a tour de force. — Marly Swick
Reuben Gill of the UN High Commission for Refugees longs to be assigned to Bidong. He believes he can relive the days of his Peace Corps stint, when he was a kind of savior to the Malaysian villagers he encountered. When he does get sent to the camp, it's as a subengineer for the Sanitation Division, a disciplinary measure after he creates an embarrassing incident at a party thrown by his boss. What he finds on Bidong is complete chaos. Reuben has a hard time adjusting to life in the camp, in part because he is overwhelmed by the hopelessness of trying to make any difference. This first novel is bleak but also steeped in black humor that is reminiscent of MASH. — Booklist
A fascinating portrait of one of the great historical dramas of our time. — Kirkus Reviews
A nebraska author has written a rich, challenging, and rewarding novel that would make a good book club choice. ... It's the kind of book you want to talk about with someone else who's read it. — Nebraska Center for the Book News


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