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Devil Makes Three
A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITOR'S CHOICE · From the award-winning, bestselling author of Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk comes a brilliant and propulsive new novel about greed, power, and American complicity set in Haiti
"An engrossing, psychologically complex and politically astute novel." ―The New York Times
Haiti, 1991. When a violent coup d’état leads to the fall of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, American expat Matt Amaker is forced to abandon his idyllic, beachfront scuba business. With the rise of a brutal military dictatorship and an international embargo threatening to destroy even the country’s most powerful players, some are looking to gain an advantage in the chaos–and others are just looking to make it through another day.
Desperate for money―and survival―Matt teams up with his best friend and business partner Alix Variel, the adventurous only son of a socially prominent Haitian family. They set their sights on legendary shipwrecks that have been rumored to contain priceless treasures off a remote section of Haiti’s southern coast. Their ambition and exploration of these disastrous wrecks come with a cascade of ill-fated incidents―one that involves Misha, Alix’s erudite sister, who stumbles onto an arms-trafficking ring masquerading as a U.S. government humanitarian aid office, and rookie CIA case officer Audrey O’Donnell, who finds herself doing clandestine work on an assignment that proves to be more difficult and dubious than she could have possibly imagined.
Devil Makes Three ’s depiction of blood politics, the machinations of power, and a country in the midst of upheaval is urgently and insistently resonant. This new novel is sure to cement Ben Fountain’s reputation as one of the twenty-first century’s boldest and most perceptive writers.
"An engrossing, psychologically complex and politically astute novel." ―The New York Times
Haiti, 1991. When a violent coup d’état leads to the fall of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, American expat Matt Amaker is forced to abandon his idyllic, beachfront scuba business. With the rise of a brutal military dictatorship and an international embargo threatening to destroy even the country’s most powerful players, some are looking to gain an advantage in the chaos–and others are just looking to make it through another day.
Desperate for money―and survival―Matt teams up with his best friend and business partner Alix Variel, the adventurous only son of a socially prominent Haitian family. They set their sights on legendary shipwrecks that have been rumored to contain priceless treasures off a remote section of Haiti’s southern coast. Their ambition and exploration of these disastrous wrecks come with a cascade of ill-fated incidents―one that involves Misha, Alix’s erudite sister, who stumbles onto an arms-trafficking ring masquerading as a U.S. government humanitarian aid office, and rookie CIA case officer Audrey O’Donnell, who finds herself doing clandestine work on an assignment that proves to be more difficult and dubious than she could have possibly imagined.
Devil Makes Three ’s depiction of blood politics, the machinations of power, and a country in the midst of upheaval is urgently and insistently resonant. This new novel is sure to cement Ben Fountain’s reputation as one of the twenty-first century’s boldest and most perceptive writers.
544 pages, Hardcover
First published September 26, 2023
About the author
Ben Fountain
14 books359 followersBen Fountain's fiction has appeared in Harper's, The Paris Review, and Zoetrope: All Story, and he has been awarded an O. Henry Prize, two Pushcart Prizes, and the PEN/Hemingway Award. He lives with his wife and their two children in Dallas, Texas.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 126 reviews
October 1, 2023
Near the end of this novel, Fountain makes a jab at Graham Greene's THE COMEDIANS, calling it "the favorite Haiti novel of people who hadn't read any other Haiti novels." It's funny because it's true, but it's an interesting choice considering that THE COMEDIANS is the novel DEVIL MAKES THREE is most like, and Greene's tradition of writing about the politics of other countries as an outsider is the one this novel is in as well. It's a tradition that is much less accepted now than it was in the last century, and Fountain jumping into it now is a big gamble. Luckily it's a gamble that mostly pays off, in part because Fountain seems well aware of the problems that come with being a white man, and foreigner writing about Haiti and understands the limits of what he can do. But it still does suffer from some of the inherent problems of this genre, and while Fountain brings Haiti in 1992 to full, vivid life, it is only a partial picture. We never really get much of an idea at all what life at this time was like for a typical Haitian, only for the privileged few.
When you consider a novel like this you run into a lot of questions about who is allowed to write what. They are messy questions and the best answers to them are that you have to write outside yourself but that you also have to be deeply thoughtful and curious when you write outside yourself. Fountain has three protagonists here, two of whom are white Americans, and one a Haitian-American woman. The least successful of the three is actually Audrey, the American CIA agent who always seems just too willing to believe that she is working for the greater good. To do her job well she has to be smart, but to be that smart she would have to recognize the corruption all around her, the casual destruction brought on by her agency and other American interests. And sometimes she sees it, but it never seems to really register with her, her optimism starts to feel ridiculous, and her effectiveness feels more necessary to the plot (she is a very convenient deus ex machina and plot problem fixer on multiple occasions) than her character brings much to it.
Misha, the Haitian-American woman, is fully developed on the page. At first she is deeply conflicted over everything, her life in two countries feels like more than a metaphor. (She was born in the US while her parents were refugees.) She has studied so much about what has led to political and economic crisis in Haiti but has trouble getting any American scholars to take her work seriously. When she is in Haiti her knowledge feels useless, her understanding of systemic structures cannot stop coups or put food in people's mouths.
Finally we have Matt, a classic Greene-esque protagonist. An American who has come to Haiti to start a scuba diving company with his Haitian friend, here to try and get himself ahead. He is not a flag-waving capitalist, he is a laid back scuba guy who just wants to run his business, live on the beach, and be left alone. When the coup ends a brief window of Haitian stability, Matt doesn't make the smart decision to leave this place where he has no roots and no future, but hangs around hoping to wait it out. Matt and his partner Alix, Misha's brother, are the churning force of the plot, two men who are convinced that everything is going to be just fine and not noticing the shockwaves they are sending out during a time when it's best to not be noticed.
I spent the first two thirds of this book metaphorically hiding my eyes because I knew bad things were going to happen. It was just a question of what and when and how bad. So if you want to feel 300 or so pages of dread, you're in luck! Once the bad things came I was curious where the book would go. Ultimately everything had that feeling of mixed surprise and inevitability that makes a very good ending.
As much as I enjoyed this, it has a tendency to lecture, to go on a bit too long about politics and philosophy from time to time. It is at its sharpest when observing the behavior of the rich and powerful, what is allowed and what is not allowed when engaging with them as someone who is not rich or powerful. It is better at showing than telling but it still persists in telling every so often. While it often lives entirely outside of the deep poverty across Haiti during the embargo, when it does dive into it, the book is efficient and smart, packing a real punch and making it feel alive and real. It makes you wish we spent a little less time with Matt and Audrey. Audrey's macro-politics is troubling, but not surprising. The absurdity of American government in its efforts to disrupt other countries is not a revelation, and while it does provide much of the elements of "political thriller," it isn't the best of the book.
I am having trouble reading much of anything these days so the fact that I was able to get through a 500+ page novel that took a few weeks to read is itself a testament to how much I enjoyed it.
One note: I attempted this on audio first and ended up having to ditch it for print. It's a tall order for audio, requiring so much Haitian Creole (the novel uses the Haitian spellings for many words, and only calls it Kreyòl) along with plenty of flat American English. The narrator did both very well, no complaints on the accents, but ultimately the tone of the reading didn't fit the material, in my opinion. It was a tall order and I am, admittedly, extremely picky about audio.
When you consider a novel like this you run into a lot of questions about who is allowed to write what. They are messy questions and the best answers to them are that you have to write outside yourself but that you also have to be deeply thoughtful and curious when you write outside yourself. Fountain has three protagonists here, two of whom are white Americans, and one a Haitian-American woman. The least successful of the three is actually Audrey, the American CIA agent who always seems just too willing to believe that she is working for the greater good. To do her job well she has to be smart, but to be that smart she would have to recognize the corruption all around her, the casual destruction brought on by her agency and other American interests. And sometimes she sees it, but it never seems to really register with her, her optimism starts to feel ridiculous, and her effectiveness feels more necessary to the plot (she is a very convenient deus ex machina and plot problem fixer on multiple occasions) than her character brings much to it.
Misha, the Haitian-American woman, is fully developed on the page. At first she is deeply conflicted over everything, her life in two countries feels like more than a metaphor. (She was born in the US while her parents were refugees.) She has studied so much about what has led to political and economic crisis in Haiti but has trouble getting any American scholars to take her work seriously. When she is in Haiti her knowledge feels useless, her understanding of systemic structures cannot stop coups or put food in people's mouths.
Finally we have Matt, a classic Greene-esque protagonist. An American who has come to Haiti to start a scuba diving company with his Haitian friend, here to try and get himself ahead. He is not a flag-waving capitalist, he is a laid back scuba guy who just wants to run his business, live on the beach, and be left alone. When the coup ends a brief window of Haitian stability, Matt doesn't make the smart decision to leave this place where he has no roots and no future, but hangs around hoping to wait it out. Matt and his partner Alix, Misha's brother, are the churning force of the plot, two men who are convinced that everything is going to be just fine and not noticing the shockwaves they are sending out during a time when it's best to not be noticed.
I spent the first two thirds of this book metaphorically hiding my eyes because I knew bad things were going to happen. It was just a question of what and when and how bad. So if you want to feel 300 or so pages of dread, you're in luck! Once the bad things came I was curious where the book would go. Ultimately everything had that feeling of mixed surprise and inevitability that makes a very good ending.
As much as I enjoyed this, it has a tendency to lecture, to go on a bit too long about politics and philosophy from time to time. It is at its sharpest when observing the behavior of the rich and powerful, what is allowed and what is not allowed when engaging with them as someone who is not rich or powerful. It is better at showing than telling but it still persists in telling every so often. While it often lives entirely outside of the deep poverty across Haiti during the embargo, when it does dive into it, the book is efficient and smart, packing a real punch and making it feel alive and real. It makes you wish we spent a little less time with Matt and Audrey. Audrey's macro-politics is troubling, but not surprising. The absurdity of American government in its efforts to disrupt other countries is not a revelation, and while it does provide much of the elements of "political thriller," it isn't the best of the book.
I am having trouble reading much of anything these days so the fact that I was able to get through a 500+ page novel that took a few weeks to read is itself a testament to how much I enjoyed it.
One note: I attempted this on audio first and ended up having to ditch it for print. It's a tall order for audio, requiring so much Haitian Creole (the novel uses the Haitian spellings for many words, and only calls it Kreyòl) along with plenty of flat American English. The narrator did both very well, no complaints on the accents, but ultimately the tone of the reading didn't fit the material, in my opinion. It was a tall order and I am, admittedly, extremely picky about audio.
September 20, 2023
Fountain has published his next novel, “Devil Makes Three.” It’s a big, deeply humane political thriller that proves the flame of Graham Greene and John le Carré is still burning.
Informed by decades of travel to Haiti, “Devil Makes Three” takes place during those bloody months after the 1991 coup d’état sent newly elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide into exile. Three decades may have dimmed many readers’ memories of that chaotic period when the world was fretting over the fate of Haiti’s fledgling democracy, but don’t let that intimidate you. Fountain deftly re-creates this geopolitical crisis without a hint of the lecturing tone that can make some works of historical fiction feel as lively as a 10th-grade textbook. Newsreel footage is spliced so seamlessly into the background of this multipronged story that you’ll barely register the shifts between fact and invention.
The scene opens in paradise, reflecting what Fountain calls Haiti’s “time-sodden beauty.” A handsome young man named Matt Amaker has come to Haiti with a modest inheritance and started a scuba business. His work partner, Alix, is the son of a wealthy local family. “Business was good, life was good and getting better all the time,” Matt thinks. “Haiti was becoming part of the world again, and here he was on the ground floor of the impending boom.” He’s tempted to imagine that the trouble in Port-au-Prince won’t affect. . . .
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/...
Informed by decades of travel to Haiti, “Devil Makes Three” takes place during those bloody months after the 1991 coup d’état sent newly elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide into exile. Three decades may have dimmed many readers’ memories of that chaotic period when the world was fretting over the fate of Haiti’s fledgling democracy, but don’t let that intimidate you. Fountain deftly re-creates this geopolitical crisis without a hint of the lecturing tone that can make some works of historical fiction feel as lively as a 10th-grade textbook. Newsreel footage is spliced so seamlessly into the background of this multipronged story that you’ll barely register the shifts between fact and invention.
The scene opens in paradise, reflecting what Fountain calls Haiti’s “time-sodden beauty.” A handsome young man named Matt Amaker has come to Haiti with a modest inheritance and started a scuba business. His work partner, Alix, is the son of a wealthy local family. “Business was good, life was good and getting better all the time,” Matt thinks. “Haiti was becoming part of the world again, and here he was on the ground floor of the impending boom.” He’s tempted to imagine that the trouble in Port-au-Prince won’t affect. . . .
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/...
August 18, 2023
Read his entire post on Rosepoint Publishing.
Matt runs a dive shop and takes swimmers to the remote and gorgeous diving area called the Zombie Hole. He loves his job and the people that he introduces to snorkeling. A new government has taken over Haiti, however, and he is no longer welcome at his business or on the island. The criminal element has complete control of the island and people are dying in the streets.
Going into town for supplies is so dangerous he is taking his life in his hands. This story describes the frightening life of the common individual in Haiti. While reading the book, I became more distressed with the people and situation on this island.
Ben Fountain has a wonderful writing style but I found the book so disturbing that I could not continue to read. My heart goes out to the people of Haiti! 3 stars – CE Williams
Matt runs a dive shop and takes swimmers to the remote and gorgeous diving area called the Zombie Hole. He loves his job and the people that he introduces to snorkeling. A new government has taken over Haiti, however, and he is no longer welcome at his business or on the island. The criminal element has complete control of the island and people are dying in the streets.
Going into town for supplies is so dangerous he is taking his life in his hands. This story describes the frightening life of the common individual in Haiti. While reading the book, I became more distressed with the people and situation on this island.
Ben Fountain has a wonderful writing style but I found the book so disturbing that I could not continue to read. My heart goes out to the people of Haiti! 3 stars – CE Williams
December 8, 2023
4.5 stars rounded up
A page-turning, politically astute story about a young American in Haiti who loses his beachfront scuba-diving business, and almost his life, in the violent 1991 military coup that unseats Jean-Bertrand Aristide. In the chaos that ensues, scrambling to find a way to survive, Matt turns to his business partner, Alix, the only son of a prominent Haitian family, and the two come up with a plan to salvage treasure from a shipwreck. This attracts the attention of many players, unwanted interest from the brutal dictatorship savaging the country, and the American billionaire they’d turned to for financing. (Oh, fellas, don’t you know anything? Never, ever trust a billionaire!) Meanwhile, Alix’s activist sister has stumbled across a humanitarian charity serving as a front for an arms-trafficking ring, and a rookie CIA officer finds she may be in over her head.
A page-turning, politically astute story about a young American in Haiti who loses his beachfront scuba-diving business, and almost his life, in the violent 1991 military coup that unseats Jean-Bertrand Aristide. In the chaos that ensues, scrambling to find a way to survive, Matt turns to his business partner, Alix, the only son of a prominent Haitian family, and the two come up with a plan to salvage treasure from a shipwreck. This attracts the attention of many players, unwanted interest from the brutal dictatorship savaging the country, and the American billionaire they’d turned to for financing. (Oh, fellas, don’t you know anything? Never, ever trust a billionaire!) Meanwhile, Alix’s activist sister has stumbled across a humanitarian charity serving as a front for an arms-trafficking ring, and a rookie CIA officer finds she may be in over her head.
December 10, 2023
This is a spy/adventure story taking place in Haiti in 1991. President Aristide has just been overthrown in a military coup and there is a complicated jostling for power. The main characters are Matt, an American who has a beach scuba business that is quickly taken over by a clandestine drugs for arms trading operation, and Alix, his best friend, a well to do Haitian entrepreneur.
There’s a lot going on in this novel. The friends start a business looking for treasure in wrecked ships, Alix’s brainy sister, Misha, works for a hospital that is completely corrupt, there’s a CIA agent also corrupt. So much corruption. So interesting learning about the history and politics of Haiti. I like a book that has a character who is the conscience of a country and educates us and that is Misha. She’s working on a PhD in French Haitian literature at Brown. And Haiti. Haiti is so beautiful and so awful. So many unnecessary murders in the seeking of power and influence. Seen mostly through the eyes of an American scuba bum. Really interesting book. A little baggy in places. A bit too much info in places.
November 4, 2023
Amazing, historical fiction at its best. Ben Fountain has written a story of political intrigue, class conflict, love, power, Haitian culture, voodoo influence and more, all within the backdrop of Haiti’s history in the 1990’s after the coup that led Aristide to exile. You don’t have to know history to get in to this story. The characters are fully developed and complex, the descriptions of the island’s demise, the poverty, the resilience of it’s people and their love for their country are on point. He doesn’t shy away from America’s complicity in all this either. I learned so much and felt so much emotion in the characters’ struggles and hard choices they were forced to make. Highly recommended!!!
April 24, 2024
The images out of Haiti that appear on the nightly news each day are horrible. Starving children, gang violence, lack of government control, and a society still reeling from recent earthquakes seem almost normal. Haiti is afflicted by constant gang wars fighting for control of Haitian cities, villages, and neighborhoods. It is important that a new novel that highlights these difficulties has been released. Ben Fountain’s fourth work, DEVIL MAKES THREE takes place in the early 1990s with Haitian instability at its height as a violent coup de’ état led to the overthrow of President Jean-Betrand Aristide’s government. The novel tells a fascinating story which is fictional, however, the background commentary lays out the terror of the daily existence of the Haitian people.
Fountain develops his novel focusing on American expat Matt Amaker who is forced to abandon his beachfront scuba business because of the chaos that dominates the Caribbean country. Amaker will team up with his friend Alix Variel, a member of a prominent Haitian family, and a partner in the defunct scuba business to pursue priceless treasures rumored to be buried on historical shipwrecks off a remote section of Haiti’s southern coast. Admirers of the work of Joseph Conrad, Graham Greene and John Le Carrie should see similarities in Fountain’s approach as he develops this deeply humane political thriller.
The novel opens with the 1991 coup in full swing. The coup resulted from the first democratic election in Haiti’s history as Aristide, a populist Catholic priest was elected president of Haiti. Aristide, a member of the National Front for Change and Democracy party, was one of the only church figures to speak out against the repression that existed under the dictatorships of the Duvalier family. Aristide’s populist Lavalas movement which advocated the use of legislation and popular mobilization as vehicles for economic reform , an end to corruption, and justice for victims of the Haitian military and the Tonton Macoutes, (a Haitian paramilitary and secret police force created in 1959 by dictator François "Papa Doc" Duvalier) earned 67.5% of the popular vote. Since Aristide’s program threatened the power of some of the Haitian elite, many of which were supporters of the Duvalier’s and the Haitian military it is not surprising that his election was soon negated. The coup took place on September 28, 1991, and was led by General Raoul Ceras and the Haitian army. The military immediately targeted pro-Aristide officials, rural and peasant organizations, neighborhood and community associations, and trade unions. The press and radio stations were soon silenced. Because of human rights abuses over 14,000 Haitian refugees arrived at Guantanamo seeking asylum.
As Fountain’s novel evolves the reign of terror of the Haitian military and gangs seem to permeate each scene. As he proceeds Fountain provides an insightful description of Haitian politics and society with poverty, corruption, and violence on full display.
Fountain introduces a number of important and interesting characters as the novel progresses. Alix who convinces Matt to move to Haiti from the United States to set up a scuba business on land owned by his family and led by its matriarch Lena Varie plays a significant role. Audrey O’Donnell aka. Shelly Graves is a “clandestine service trainee” who arrived during the coup as an assistant political attaché as her CIA cover. Graves will fall in love with Alix creating a rather unusual relationship. There is Tommy Rittenhouse who runs the Kokiyaj Beach Resort; Dr. Jean-Hubert Laroque who operates his family’s hospital which has existed in Haiti for generations; Misha Variel, a Ph. D candidate in French literature at Brown University who Matt adores; General Romeo Concers, second in command during the coup; Sonia Delambre, the mistress of Colonel Rene Delvas and a CIA asset; Charles Durham “CD” Nelms who helped finance the treasure hunting scheme and then abandoned Matt and Alix; and a host of other characters that remind one of Conrad, Greene, and Le Carrie.
The role of the CIA is important as Chief of Station Lorenz and his people grew concerned that Matt and Alix would discover gold and silver which would be seized by the Haitian army and used to stabilize its dictatorial regime. This scenario was complex because Shelly and Alix’s affair will end, and she is distraught. An undercurrent throughout is the role of the US government as people wonder if newly elected President Bill Clinton will allow boat people into the United States, a departure from the policies of the Bush administration. Fountain integrates American duplicity, support for corporate interests, and in effect the exploitation of the Haitian people on a daily basis.
Employing Matt’s expertise, Fountain leads the reader through the deep exploration of the Haitian coast in search of treasure located in Anse Serrat. Matt is convinced there are bronze cannons, gold, and silver inside a shipwrecked Spanish galleon. Fountain describes the intricacies of mapping the site, the types of tools used and other equipment in minute detail. If you are a scuba aficionado, this book is for you! In addition, Fountain describes flora, coral, and aquatic life as Matt’s team uncovers evidence of the Philippvs crest on one of the canons.
There are many layers to Fountain’s story. There is the everyday existence of the Haitian people. Starvation, poor or no medical care, murders and political assassination along with the seizure of private property by coup leaders, and little or no income for families who live in uninhabitable homes pervade the novel. The importance of vodou also dominates the story through constant references and the role of Duvie, a Vodou priest who tries to educate Matt and others of the importance Vodou plays in the lives of ordinary Haitians.
As the novel evolves it is clear that coup leaders like General Concers are obsessed with the 500th anniversary of Columbus’ voyage and want Matt to locate the shipwrecked Santa Maria which would enhance his regime’s reputation. This places Matt, Alix, and others in a precarious position as Concers requests are more like demands with consequences if they are not met. At the same time Shelly, who thinks she knows everything through her sources, works to install a government that favors American interests.
Francine Prose writes in her New York Times review and succinctly gets to the core of Fountain’s novel writing, “Not only a skillful author, but a brave one, Fountain is drawn to difficult subjects. An earlier novel, the award-winning BILLY LYNN’S LONG HALFTIME WALK featured a damaged veteran of the Iraq war who was promoted, by the news media, as a conquering hero. It takes courage to set an extremely complicated work of fiction in Haiti, to write across the lines of class, color, gender, ideology and nationality. And it’s nervy to blow the whistle on how the C.I.A. has engineered regime changes worldwide, often with disastrous results.
Over 500 pages long, the novel has its slow spots. Some readers may be more interested than I was in the specs of diving equipment. Others may question why so much of the book is devoted to Matt and Alix’s harebrained plan to solve their money woes by finding sunken treasure off the Haitian coast. When a fabulously awful character, Davis, seems to wander in from an Elmore Leonard novel — ‘Someone needed to slap a warning on his forehead: Contents Under Pressure’— you can’t help wondering why Matt and Alix (neither of them fools) believe they can do business with him or with the rich, sketchy owner of the ship from which they dive in search of gold. But it all makes perfect sense when we realize that, during a time of lawlessness, a historically significant and potentially lucrative treasure hunt is just another ScubaRave, on steroids.
Given the thrum of political anxiety that keeps many of us awake at night, some readers might think: The last thing I need right now is a novel about a crisis that has worsened over time in one of the world’s poorest nations. I understand the sentiment, but I was grateful for the old-fashioned pleasure of immersion in a long book with engaging characters, a sense of history and place, and a multifaceted vision of people trying to figure out what to do when the world around them is changing.”*
• Francine Prose, “Treasure and Trouble,” New York Times Book Review, October 15, 2023, p. 18.
Fountain develops his novel focusing on American expat Matt Amaker who is forced to abandon his beachfront scuba business because of the chaos that dominates the Caribbean country. Amaker will team up with his friend Alix Variel, a member of a prominent Haitian family, and a partner in the defunct scuba business to pursue priceless treasures rumored to be buried on historical shipwrecks off a remote section of Haiti’s southern coast. Admirers of the work of Joseph Conrad, Graham Greene and John Le Carrie should see similarities in Fountain’s approach as he develops this deeply humane political thriller.
The novel opens with the 1991 coup in full swing. The coup resulted from the first democratic election in Haiti’s history as Aristide, a populist Catholic priest was elected president of Haiti. Aristide, a member of the National Front for Change and Democracy party, was one of the only church figures to speak out against the repression that existed under the dictatorships of the Duvalier family. Aristide’s populist Lavalas movement which advocated the use of legislation and popular mobilization as vehicles for economic reform , an end to corruption, and justice for victims of the Haitian military and the Tonton Macoutes, (a Haitian paramilitary and secret police force created in 1959 by dictator François "Papa Doc" Duvalier) earned 67.5% of the popular vote. Since Aristide’s program threatened the power of some of the Haitian elite, many of which were supporters of the Duvalier’s and the Haitian military it is not surprising that his election was soon negated. The coup took place on September 28, 1991, and was led by General Raoul Ceras and the Haitian army. The military immediately targeted pro-Aristide officials, rural and peasant organizations, neighborhood and community associations, and trade unions. The press and radio stations were soon silenced. Because of human rights abuses over 14,000 Haitian refugees arrived at Guantanamo seeking asylum.
As Fountain’s novel evolves the reign of terror of the Haitian military and gangs seem to permeate each scene. As he proceeds Fountain provides an insightful description of Haitian politics and society with poverty, corruption, and violence on full display.
Fountain introduces a number of important and interesting characters as the novel progresses. Alix who convinces Matt to move to Haiti from the United States to set up a scuba business on land owned by his family and led by its matriarch Lena Varie plays a significant role. Audrey O’Donnell aka. Shelly Graves is a “clandestine service trainee” who arrived during the coup as an assistant political attaché as her CIA cover. Graves will fall in love with Alix creating a rather unusual relationship. There is Tommy Rittenhouse who runs the Kokiyaj Beach Resort; Dr. Jean-Hubert Laroque who operates his family’s hospital which has existed in Haiti for generations; Misha Variel, a Ph. D candidate in French literature at Brown University who Matt adores; General Romeo Concers, second in command during the coup; Sonia Delambre, the mistress of Colonel Rene Delvas and a CIA asset; Charles Durham “CD” Nelms who helped finance the treasure hunting scheme and then abandoned Matt and Alix; and a host of other characters that remind one of Conrad, Greene, and Le Carrie.
The role of the CIA is important as Chief of Station Lorenz and his people grew concerned that Matt and Alix would discover gold and silver which would be seized by the Haitian army and used to stabilize its dictatorial regime. This scenario was complex because Shelly and Alix’s affair will end, and she is distraught. An undercurrent throughout is the role of the US government as people wonder if newly elected President Bill Clinton will allow boat people into the United States, a departure from the policies of the Bush administration. Fountain integrates American duplicity, support for corporate interests, and in effect the exploitation of the Haitian people on a daily basis.
Employing Matt’s expertise, Fountain leads the reader through the deep exploration of the Haitian coast in search of treasure located in Anse Serrat. Matt is convinced there are bronze cannons, gold, and silver inside a shipwrecked Spanish galleon. Fountain describes the intricacies of mapping the site, the types of tools used and other equipment in minute detail. If you are a scuba aficionado, this book is for you! In addition, Fountain describes flora, coral, and aquatic life as Matt’s team uncovers evidence of the Philippvs crest on one of the canons.
There are many layers to Fountain’s story. There is the everyday existence of the Haitian people. Starvation, poor or no medical care, murders and political assassination along with the seizure of private property by coup leaders, and little or no income for families who live in uninhabitable homes pervade the novel. The importance of vodou also dominates the story through constant references and the role of Duvie, a Vodou priest who tries to educate Matt and others of the importance Vodou plays in the lives of ordinary Haitians.
As the novel evolves it is clear that coup leaders like General Concers are obsessed with the 500th anniversary of Columbus’ voyage and want Matt to locate the shipwrecked Santa Maria which would enhance his regime’s reputation. This places Matt, Alix, and others in a precarious position as Concers requests are more like demands with consequences if they are not met. At the same time Shelly, who thinks she knows everything through her sources, works to install a government that favors American interests.
Francine Prose writes in her New York Times review and succinctly gets to the core of Fountain’s novel writing, “Not only a skillful author, but a brave one, Fountain is drawn to difficult subjects. An earlier novel, the award-winning BILLY LYNN’S LONG HALFTIME WALK featured a damaged veteran of the Iraq war who was promoted, by the news media, as a conquering hero. It takes courage to set an extremely complicated work of fiction in Haiti, to write across the lines of class, color, gender, ideology and nationality. And it’s nervy to blow the whistle on how the C.I.A. has engineered regime changes worldwide, often with disastrous results.
Over 500 pages long, the novel has its slow spots. Some readers may be more interested than I was in the specs of diving equipment. Others may question why so much of the book is devoted to Matt and Alix’s harebrained plan to solve their money woes by finding sunken treasure off the Haitian coast. When a fabulously awful character, Davis, seems to wander in from an Elmore Leonard novel — ‘Someone needed to slap a warning on his forehead: Contents Under Pressure’— you can’t help wondering why Matt and Alix (neither of them fools) believe they can do business with him or with the rich, sketchy owner of the ship from which they dive in search of gold. But it all makes perfect sense when we realize that, during a time of lawlessness, a historically significant and potentially lucrative treasure hunt is just another ScubaRave, on steroids.
Given the thrum of political anxiety that keeps many of us awake at night, some readers might think: The last thing I need right now is a novel about a crisis that has worsened over time in one of the world’s poorest nations. I understand the sentiment, but I was grateful for the old-fashioned pleasure of immersion in a long book with engaging characters, a sense of history and place, and a multifaceted vision of people trying to figure out what to do when the world around them is changing.”*
• Francine Prose, “Treasure and Trouble,” New York Times Book Review, October 15, 2023, p. 18.
November 15, 2023
You could almost believe, if you didn’t know the novel’s actual authorship, that Ben Fountain’s “Devil Makes Three," about the coup that ousted Haiti’s Aristide, was a hitherto unknown work of the late Robert Stone, whose particular metier was to register the often disastrous consequences of U.S policy abroad – the mayor’s unattached head that turns up in Fountain’s real-life Haiti could as well have turned up in Stone’s fictional Tecan. And the violence that erupts at the rally in “Devil” when the U.S. looks to install its own favored candidate in the wake of the coup was reminiscent for me of how chaos also carried the day in the climactic right-wing rally in Stone’s “Hall of Mirrors.”
But perhaps even more evocative for me of Stone in Fountain's novel is the edgy writing with its strong philosophical resonance. This, for instance, from a character as she's frantically calling embassies when she thinks her brother and her lover have been snatched up by the Haitian military or police after the coup: “she had Adorno's theory of instrumental reason to guide her, i.e., the principle that Enlightenment reason had been reduced over the twentieth century to purely utilitarian thinking.” Or this, later: "Hegel took for his ipso facto the tidy analytical unit of the nation state and gave himself a giant pass with that."
Intriguing or off-putting, such formulations, depending on your appetite for philosophical reflection, but however smoothly or not they go down for a reader, they do establish a clear intent, as with a Stone novel, to make Fountain’s novel something more than mere entertainment.
Not that the novel isn’t exciting enough as straight adventure, with how calamitously the coup disrupts the lives of the novel’s four main characters, principally American Matt Amaker, who is dispossessed of his scuba business in “an up close and personal encounter with the Haitian army.” Worse, he will come to be incarcerated along with an associate, Alix, as Alix’s sister, Misha, frantically works to secure the two men's release.
Misha is one of the novel’s two principal female characters, the other being perhaps the most interesting character for me, a sort of GI Jane (“tall, blond, strapping broad-shouldered from four years of college crew”) who is ostensibly an attache at the American embassy but, also reminiscent of a Stone character, actually a U.S. intelligence operative feeling out the coup to see how it might be milked to serve U.S. interests.
Evocative it all was for me not just of Stone’s fiction, but also of the time my junior year in high school when world events first really impinged on my consciousness, with news in all the papers of the ouster and assassination of Congo’s Patrice Lumumba, an affair implicitly if not explicitly backed by the U.S. The beginning it was of my education that U.S. intentions abroad weren’t always so pure, a lesson driven even more pointedly home for me several years later, when the U.S. mired itself in Vietnam, an American misstep which also raises its head in Fountain’s novel, where a veteran of the war expresses pride that, unlike many of his disgruntled fellows, he never threw back his medals.
But beyond the real-life memories and evocations of Stone, what stood out most for me about Fountain’s novel was its depiction of Haiti, “poor … loud, voodoo-doing Haiti,” which, with the horrendous state of hospital conditions depicted for its babies, was evocative for me of conditions reported today in Gaza, where, sadly, it’s not just fiction but reality that children, as usual in such situations, are bearing the brunt of human madness.
Wrenchingly timely, in short, Fountain’s novel, though weakened somewhat for me by an occasional excess of detail about things such as the breakdown of a compressor or the physical dimensions of a galleon cannon (a full page or so of this).
But perhaps even more evocative for me of Stone in Fountain's novel is the edgy writing with its strong philosophical resonance. This, for instance, from a character as she's frantically calling embassies when she thinks her brother and her lover have been snatched up by the Haitian military or police after the coup: “she had Adorno's theory of instrumental reason to guide her, i.e., the principle that Enlightenment reason had been reduced over the twentieth century to purely utilitarian thinking.” Or this, later: "Hegel took for his ipso facto the tidy analytical unit of the nation state and gave himself a giant pass with that."
Intriguing or off-putting, such formulations, depending on your appetite for philosophical reflection, but however smoothly or not they go down for a reader, they do establish a clear intent, as with a Stone novel, to make Fountain’s novel something more than mere entertainment.
Not that the novel isn’t exciting enough as straight adventure, with how calamitously the coup disrupts the lives of the novel’s four main characters, principally American Matt Amaker, who is dispossessed of his scuba business in “an up close and personal encounter with the Haitian army.” Worse, he will come to be incarcerated along with an associate, Alix, as Alix’s sister, Misha, frantically works to secure the two men's release.
Misha is one of the novel’s two principal female characters, the other being perhaps the most interesting character for me, a sort of GI Jane (“tall, blond, strapping broad-shouldered from four years of college crew”) who is ostensibly an attache at the American embassy but, also reminiscent of a Stone character, actually a U.S. intelligence operative feeling out the coup to see how it might be milked to serve U.S. interests.
Evocative it all was for me not just of Stone’s fiction, but also of the time my junior year in high school when world events first really impinged on my consciousness, with news in all the papers of the ouster and assassination of Congo’s Patrice Lumumba, an affair implicitly if not explicitly backed by the U.S. The beginning it was of my education that U.S. intentions abroad weren’t always so pure, a lesson driven even more pointedly home for me several years later, when the U.S. mired itself in Vietnam, an American misstep which also raises its head in Fountain’s novel, where a veteran of the war expresses pride that, unlike many of his disgruntled fellows, he never threw back his medals.
But beyond the real-life memories and evocations of Stone, what stood out most for me about Fountain’s novel was its depiction of Haiti, “poor … loud, voodoo-doing Haiti,” which, with the horrendous state of hospital conditions depicted for its babies, was evocative for me of conditions reported today in Gaza, where, sadly, it’s not just fiction but reality that children, as usual in such situations, are bearing the brunt of human madness.
Wrenchingly timely, in short, Fountain’s novel, though weakened somewhat for me by an occasional excess of detail about things such as the breakdown of a compressor or the physical dimensions of a galleon cannon (a full page or so of this).
December 28, 2024
really enjoyed this tbh I think it spoke to my intellectual as well as historical fiction loving side especially with Misha who tries to reconcile the academic with the actual challenges facing the nation
the writing was a bit complex at times cause of how all over the place the plot was so really make sure you’re continuously reading cause if you put it down for a week you’ll be lost. But I still love the multiple POV storytelling it gave lots of different ways of viewing the country at the time.
I think given that the author is from outside the culture he still does a pretty good job and it’s not cringe like American dirt, but this also limits what he has access to so it’s definitely characters with privileges rather than the fraught poor but i prefer that he didn’t try to write based on assumptions tbh
reccomend !!
the writing was a bit complex at times cause of how all over the place the plot was so really make sure you’re continuously reading cause if you put it down for a week you’ll be lost. But I still love the multiple POV storytelling it gave lots of different ways of viewing the country at the time.
I think given that the author is from outside the culture he still does a pretty good job and it’s not cringe like American dirt, but this also limits what he has access to so it’s definitely characters with privileges rather than the fraught poor but i prefer that he didn’t try to write based on assumptions tbh
reccomend !!
April 26, 2024
I absolutely loved this novel.
February 12, 2024
Learned a lot about Haitian culture and language (especially because I listened to this book, so actually heard what Creole sounds like!), as well as its complicated political history, full of not-so-well-intentioned interventions by the US of A.
Premise: The intertwining stories of (1) an American SCUBA instructor living in Haiti, who is in love with (2) the intellectual, Brown-educated sister of his Haitian business partner, and (3) the American CIA agent and love interest of said business partner as they navigate, manipulate, and are manipulated by political unrest in the country.
Loved the narration about SCUBA diving!
Premise: The intertwining stories of (1) an American SCUBA instructor living in Haiti, who is in love with (2) the intellectual, Brown-educated sister of his Haitian business partner, and (3) the American CIA agent and love interest of said business partner as they navigate, manipulate, and are manipulated by political unrest in the country.
Loved the narration about SCUBA diving!
Read
January 30, 2024I lived in Haiti for three years and was there when Jean Bertrand Aristide fled the country and the UN came in and… yeah. So this book felt pretty much like reading my own journal from that time and the newspapers I kept. I did enjoy the treasure hunting aspect.
March 30, 2024
After finishing Prophet Song earlier this month, I didn’t want to quickly move to a gentle book. For me, Prophet Song demands you not ignore the strife and hardship others are facing in times of national crisis. Given the current turmoil in Haiti, this book was a natural continuation of exploring when do you leave your country when it is in turmoil.
Overall, this is a very good book. He presents multiple views of those involved in the coup and others impacted. Like Prophet Song, you understand how someone can stay too long in a dangerous situation and pass on the opportunity to escape.
I would have appreciated the level of detail Fountain provides if I had read about the 1991 coup prior to reading this book. I am sure others enjoy the descriptive nature of his writing but it feels heavy handed for me.
Although it was an extra 100-150 pages too long, it was well worth the read.
Overall, this is a very good book. He presents multiple views of those involved in the coup and others impacted. Like Prophet Song, you understand how someone can stay too long in a dangerous situation and pass on the opportunity to escape.
I would have appreciated the level of detail Fountain provides if I had read about the 1991 coup prior to reading this book. I am sure others enjoy the descriptive nature of his writing but it feels heavy handed for me.
Although it was an extra 100-150 pages too long, it was well worth the read.
October 25, 2024
The opening scenes were the best. Offset by the brilliant sunshine, blue sea, and tropical splendor of rural Haiti were malevolent hints of violence to come. It didn't take long, appearing in the guise of good old boys wishing to have fun deep sea diving. The main characters had to adjust their lives to a country in the midst of a bloody political coup. Some lives hung by a thread. The CIA turned a blind eye to corruption and drug dealing. Ordinary people suffered as they usually do.
But the story took some odd turns. The coup leader turned out to be a mild mannered guy, slightly henpecked by his wife. Political prisoners thrown into a suffocating, unsurvivable dungeon were never in focus. Wealthy Haitians continued their lives pretty much as before the coup. Having experienced Haiti during this tumultuous time period, I craved more of a sharp political definition to the events.
But the story took some odd turns. The coup leader turned out to be a mild mannered guy, slightly henpecked by his wife. Political prisoners thrown into a suffocating, unsurvivable dungeon were never in focus. Wealthy Haitians continued their lives pretty much as before the coup. Having experienced Haiti during this tumultuous time period, I craved more of a sharp political definition to the events.
October 6, 2024
I really really wanted to like this book but ultimately, I think I would have been okay giving up on it. This book could be 250 pages shorter. My biggest complaint is that the author doesn’t really introduce characters but rather they appear and you have to figure out who/what/why which was frustrating in a book that had SO many characters. I think the concept was good but poorly executed.
December 20, 2023
Eh. I guess political thrillers aren't my favorite.
Story was good but too long, kind of hung there in limbo for a bit too long with Matt.
The audiobook was excellent though, I will be finding more books by that narrator, who is the reason for the third star here.
Story was good but too long, kind of hung there in limbo for a bit too long with Matt.
The audiobook was excellent though, I will be finding more books by that narrator, who is the reason for the third star here.
March 22, 2024
Really interesting storyline that does a great job delving into the detailed history of a place you don’t generally hear about. Was a bit hard to keep all the names and places straight at first during world building, and felt like there were a few storylines not wrapped up.
July 20, 2023
This was a difficult read for me. Throughout the book I felt lost and not really understood what was happening. I often wondered if it would have been more interesting had i known more about the Revolution of Haiti and the toll it took on its people.
September 25, 2023
Huge trigger warnings. Lots of language, violence, assault and sexual assault in the first 20 pages. That is as far as I got. It was just too much. I'm not going to read that kind of content. I couldn't go farther in this one.
This review copy was provided by the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review.
This review copy was provided by the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review.
August 30, 2023
Matt Amaker has just about reached the break-even point with his dive business operating off the coast of Haiti. When Aristide falls to a military coup things take a drastic turn. Matt reimagines his business into a treasure hunting venture that explores old, underwater vessels for what ever they might contain but also attracts some unfortunate attention.
There is also a rookie CIA officer who is in way over her head. Readers are given this woman’s real name (Audrey O’Donnell) as well as her operative name (Shelley Graber) for reasons I couldn’t discern and it is nothing but confusing in an already challenging and complex story of good guys vs bad. This story illustrates the cost of military dictatorships, embargoes, people and entities masquerading as something they are not. It’s easy for the characters to get pulled unwittingly into bad situations.
Ben Fountain knows his stuff when it comes to Haiti’s problems and with excellent storytelling he melds the political with the characters to make the story both engaging and informative and shines a light on a somewhat unsettled part of the world.
Thanks to @bookbrowse and @flatiron_books for the #advancereaderscopy.
There is also a rookie CIA officer who is in way over her head. Readers are given this woman’s real name (Audrey O’Donnell) as well as her operative name (Shelley Graber) for reasons I couldn’t discern and it is nothing but confusing in an already challenging and complex story of good guys vs bad. This story illustrates the cost of military dictatorships, embargoes, people and entities masquerading as something they are not. It’s easy for the characters to get pulled unwittingly into bad situations.
Ben Fountain knows his stuff when it comes to Haiti’s problems and with excellent storytelling he melds the political with the characters to make the story both engaging and informative and shines a light on a somewhat unsettled part of the world.
Thanks to @bookbrowse and @flatiron_books for the #advancereaderscopy.
October 16, 2023
I loved Billy Lynch's Long Half-Time walk and hoped for the best in Ben Fountain's new book, Devil Makes Three. Although not as compelling as Billy Lynch, Devil Makes Three was an interesting and well-written book. Set in Jamaica at the time of the 1991 coup that ousted Aristede, the book follows Matt, an easy-going American running a scuba shop on the beach, and his partner, Alix, the son of a wealthy and educated Haitian family. Their businesses are shut down with the military takeover and they're faced with dealing with a new reality in Haiti. Another central character, Shelley (or Audrey depending on the situation), is a smart, young CIA agent. She wants to help do good in Haiti but is also striving to make a name for herself. And another, Misha, Alix's sister and post-grad student at Brown, puts her education on hold to do her best to make a difference in the struggles of the Haitian people. The characters lives collide as the country falls into a hellish situation.
Not knowing much about the history of Haiti, the book was a glimpse into the besiged people of the country. There is intrigue, horror, loss, and all the while, the author paints a picture of a population of people who love their country and will not give up on it despite the corruption (including the corrupt behavior of the US government). He does this while telling a complex story of flawed humans trying to do the right thing while trying to stay alive.
Not knowing much about the history of Haiti, the book was a glimpse into the besiged people of the country. There is intrigue, horror, loss, and all the while, the author paints a picture of a population of people who love their country and will not give up on it despite the corruption (including the corrupt behavior of the US government). He does this while telling a complex story of flawed humans trying to do the right thing while trying to stay alive.
January 22, 2024
This is not my typical kind of read, but it caught my interest due to the fact that it’s set in Haiti after the coup that unseated Jean Bertrand Aristide in 1991. The reason for my interest is that my son is a pastor and he has taken eight trips to Haiti on a mission building a church, taking shoes for children as well as educational tools and toys, as well as creating clean water systems and more.
The plot of this historical fiction focuses on Matt who owns a dive shop. He takes clients/customers to a remote area called the Zombie Hole. There is where he shows people how to snorkel, and he loves what he does…until a new government takes over and he no longer can do what he loves. This new government is not a good one that cares about/for its people. It’s truly a criminal element that is self-serving to its own political agenda. Matt doesn’t simply lie down and take his unwelcomeness at his dive shop; instead, he finds a way that puts his life in danger in order to get supplies that he needs.
I found the historical aspect of the novel very interesting, heartbreaking, and dehumanizing. I am happy that I read this one so that I understand in many ways what my son faces potentially when he takes a group of people to Haiti (including 2 of his own children and 1 of his nieces). They always have to check which areas are totally unsafe to travel totally avoid and he’s learned a new culture and many different ways of how they are socially.
I want to thank NetGalley and the publisher for a free e-ARC and ebook in exchange for my honest opinion, which I have given
The plot of this historical fiction focuses on Matt who owns a dive shop. He takes clients/customers to a remote area called the Zombie Hole. There is where he shows people how to snorkel, and he loves what he does…until a new government takes over and he no longer can do what he loves. This new government is not a good one that cares about/for its people. It’s truly a criminal element that is self-serving to its own political agenda. Matt doesn’t simply lie down and take his unwelcomeness at his dive shop; instead, he finds a way that puts his life in danger in order to get supplies that he needs.
I found the historical aspect of the novel very interesting, heartbreaking, and dehumanizing. I am happy that I read this one so that I understand in many ways what my son faces potentially when he takes a group of people to Haiti (including 2 of his own children and 1 of his nieces). They always have to check which areas are totally unsafe to travel totally avoid and he’s learned a new culture and many different ways of how they are socially.
I want to thank NetGalley and the publisher for a free e-ARC and ebook in exchange for my honest opinion, which I have given
December 3, 2023
If you have a deep interest in Haiti--its landscape, its politics, its elite and its regular folks, and even the details of treasures in shipwrecks off its shores, this book, which is long, is well worth reading. Ben Fountain is a sixty-something white American U.S. guy who has his nerve even to step into this subject matter, but he knows his stuff about Haiti, which, according to Wikipedia, he has visited over thirty times. Set in 1991, the year of the coup that temporarily (this time) displaced President Jean Bertrand Aristide, the action of the novel is primarily among some blans (Krèyol for white people), who include the male owner of a scuba diving business, a female CIA agent, and their elite connections and friends, who include the scuba guy's best friend and partner, along with his family, which in turn includes the most interesting character in the book, a young woman well-versed in the modern political literature about post-modern capitalism and its deep colonial roots. Whew! What a sentence! This tome is dense and complex, and occasionally wanders into arcane detail where I would lose interest for a few pages, but the content and the prose always drew me back. Unfortunately our author does not enter the ranks of Lavalás, Aristide's political party on the ground, but he does have plenty to say about why both Aristide and Lavalás are necessary. "Devil Makes Three" required concerted effort, and I liked it. A lot. Oh, and by the way, I found the sex, done from both male and female points of view, different and interesting.
September 26, 2023
Devil works on multiple levels: It’s thoughtful and provocative about a host of issues involving imperialism, racism, and American complicity in the 1991 coup against Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and it’s also a thrilling and suspenseful tale about shipwrecks and treasure-hunting and CIA machinations. The balance here is tricky, but Fountain pulls it off (the Graham Greene comparisons are apropos) with strong writing, multifaceted characters, utter immersion in the place and time, and a powerfully humanistic point of view.
November 16, 2023
THE CIA, SUNKEN SPANISH TREASURE, A "VOODOO" PRIEST, AND A MILITARY COUP IN HAITI
Three decades ago, a military coup overthrew Haiti’s popularly elected young president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, after less than seven months in office. Former CIA Director George H. W. Bush, now President, set the CIA in motion to keep the military in power and prevent Aristide’s return. But it all changed with the election of Bill Clinton the following year. With US help, the populist former priest returned to office three times over the next decade—until the military intervened again each time. And award-winning novelist Ben Fountain conjures up the violence and constantly shifting balance of forces in his explosive tale, Devil Makes Three. Set in Haiti over the course of two years beginning in 1991, the novel conveys with brute force the harsh reality of life in one of the world’s most violence-prone nations.
FOUR YOUNG PEOPLE EXPERIENCE THE COUP IN HAITI
To anchor his story, Fountain introduces us to a quartet of young characters. Two are American, two Haitian. Matt Amaker is a rootless college dropout who opened a scuba diving business with Alix Variel, the son of a wealthy and prominent Haitian family. Alix is unfocused and always up for adventure, unlike his sister, Misha Variel. Haitian-American due to her birth in the US, Misha is a PhD candidate in French literature at Brown University. And Shelly Graver is a CIA officer working under diplomatic cover in the US Embassy. She’s part of the CIA team dispatched to Port-au-Prince to engineer and support the coup. And Shelly’s interaction with the other three is a central thread in the plot that weaves its way through the uncoordinated violence unleashed by the coup.
THE MEN IN CHARGE IN THE HAITIAN COUP
Surrounding these four central characters is a large cast of other prominent actors. Most notable among them are two:
** General Romeo Concers, commander in chief of the Les Forces Armées d’Haiti, the FAd’H, and now president of the country. Concers himself comes across as a decent man, but not those he commands. They conjure up memories of Papa Doc‘s spectacularly violent death squads, the Tontons Macoute. In fact, many of the men in the FAd’H are former Macoute.
** The CIA Chief of Station, identified only as Lorenz. He rides herd on the gaggle of thugs the Agency has dispatched to Haiti. With just one exception, a Mormon officer known as Baby Jesus, they treat Shelly with derision and subject her to a running course of sexual harassment. Except that Shelly is having none of it, and she gives as good as she gets. She’s also a lot smarter than any of them.
A SPRAWLING SUPPORTING CAST
Other characters play important supporting roles in Fountain’s drama:
** Tommy Rittenhouse, an American expat who owns and runs a popular restaurant. With long experience in Haiti, he serves as Matt’s sounding board and source of bitterly acquired wisdom.
** A swarm of Haitian military officers, most prominently two colonels in constant conflict with each other.
** A Vodou (“voodoo”) priest known as Duvie, who teaches Shelly about his religion, so widely misunderstood in North America.
** A Haitian physician, Jean-Hubert, who runs a profoundly underfunded hospital and several clinics. There, Misha Variel goes to work as a volunteer, stalling her return to Brown.
Throughout the novel, Fountain displays more than passing familiarity with both Kreyòl, the local language (spelled Creole in English), and of Vodou. And he’s clearly done his homework about the hunt for sunken Spanish gold off Haiti’s coast, which plays an instrumental tole in his story. So does the CIA’s underhanded role in manipulating Haitian politics. All told, the author paints a fascinating picture of a country in turmoil at a key inflection point in its history. Because the 1991 coup in Haiti was a fateful turning point, setting the stage for seemingly endless violence in the years ever since.
HISTORICAL FOOTNOTE
Few Americans are aware of the great debt we owe to the people of Haiti. Or that the Haitian nation gained its freedom in a war of independence much like our own. Beginning in 1791, a year before George Washington served his first year as President, the people of Haiti, mostly slaves, defeated the French, and later the British and Spanish as well. It was the world’s first successful slave revolt. And that thirteen-year-long effort drained the French treasury and its leaders’ resolve. Thus, in 1804, Napoleon Bonaparte called it quits—and sold the vast Louisiana territory to the new United States for $15 million. The money would finance Napoleon’s ultimately hopeless wars in Europe. But the land the US gained doubled America’s reach across the North American continent.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ben Fountain was born in 1958 in Chapel Hill and grew up in the tobacco country of eastern North Carolina. He earned a BA in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a JD from Duke University School of Law. He briefly practiced real estate law before turning full-time to writing, and no wonder. Nearly everything he’s written has won literary awards. Fountain’s 2012 novel, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, won the National Book Critics’ Circle Award and was a finalist for the National Book Award. The novel was later adapted into a feature film by three-time Oscar winner Ang Lee. Devil Makes Three is Fountain’s third novel. He lives in Dallas, Texas with his wife of 32 years, Sharon Fountain.
Three decades ago, a military coup overthrew Haiti’s popularly elected young president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, after less than seven months in office. Former CIA Director George H. W. Bush, now President, set the CIA in motion to keep the military in power and prevent Aristide’s return. But it all changed with the election of Bill Clinton the following year. With US help, the populist former priest returned to office three times over the next decade—until the military intervened again each time. And award-winning novelist Ben Fountain conjures up the violence and constantly shifting balance of forces in his explosive tale, Devil Makes Three. Set in Haiti over the course of two years beginning in 1991, the novel conveys with brute force the harsh reality of life in one of the world’s most violence-prone nations.
FOUR YOUNG PEOPLE EXPERIENCE THE COUP IN HAITI
To anchor his story, Fountain introduces us to a quartet of young characters. Two are American, two Haitian. Matt Amaker is a rootless college dropout who opened a scuba diving business with Alix Variel, the son of a wealthy and prominent Haitian family. Alix is unfocused and always up for adventure, unlike his sister, Misha Variel. Haitian-American due to her birth in the US, Misha is a PhD candidate in French literature at Brown University. And Shelly Graver is a CIA officer working under diplomatic cover in the US Embassy. She’s part of the CIA team dispatched to Port-au-Prince to engineer and support the coup. And Shelly’s interaction with the other three is a central thread in the plot that weaves its way through the uncoordinated violence unleashed by the coup.
THE MEN IN CHARGE IN THE HAITIAN COUP
Surrounding these four central characters is a large cast of other prominent actors. Most notable among them are two:
** General Romeo Concers, commander in chief of the Les Forces Armées d’Haiti, the FAd’H, and now president of the country. Concers himself comes across as a decent man, but not those he commands. They conjure up memories of Papa Doc‘s spectacularly violent death squads, the Tontons Macoute. In fact, many of the men in the FAd’H are former Macoute.
** The CIA Chief of Station, identified only as Lorenz. He rides herd on the gaggle of thugs the Agency has dispatched to Haiti. With just one exception, a Mormon officer known as Baby Jesus, they treat Shelly with derision and subject her to a running course of sexual harassment. Except that Shelly is having none of it, and she gives as good as she gets. She’s also a lot smarter than any of them.
A SPRAWLING SUPPORTING CAST
Other characters play important supporting roles in Fountain’s drama:
** Tommy Rittenhouse, an American expat who owns and runs a popular restaurant. With long experience in Haiti, he serves as Matt’s sounding board and source of bitterly acquired wisdom.
** A swarm of Haitian military officers, most prominently two colonels in constant conflict with each other.
** A Vodou (“voodoo”) priest known as Duvie, who teaches Shelly about his religion, so widely misunderstood in North America.
** A Haitian physician, Jean-Hubert, who runs a profoundly underfunded hospital and several clinics. There, Misha Variel goes to work as a volunteer, stalling her return to Brown.
Throughout the novel, Fountain displays more than passing familiarity with both Kreyòl, the local language (spelled Creole in English), and of Vodou. And he’s clearly done his homework about the hunt for sunken Spanish gold off Haiti’s coast, which plays an instrumental tole in his story. So does the CIA’s underhanded role in manipulating Haitian politics. All told, the author paints a fascinating picture of a country in turmoil at a key inflection point in its history. Because the 1991 coup in Haiti was a fateful turning point, setting the stage for seemingly endless violence in the years ever since.
HISTORICAL FOOTNOTE
Few Americans are aware of the great debt we owe to the people of Haiti. Or that the Haitian nation gained its freedom in a war of independence much like our own. Beginning in 1791, a year before George Washington served his first year as President, the people of Haiti, mostly slaves, defeated the French, and later the British and Spanish as well. It was the world’s first successful slave revolt. And that thirteen-year-long effort drained the French treasury and its leaders’ resolve. Thus, in 1804, Napoleon Bonaparte called it quits—and sold the vast Louisiana territory to the new United States for $15 million. The money would finance Napoleon’s ultimately hopeless wars in Europe. But the land the US gained doubled America’s reach across the North American continent.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ben Fountain was born in 1958 in Chapel Hill and grew up in the tobacco country of eastern North Carolina. He earned a BA in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a JD from Duke University School of Law. He briefly practiced real estate law before turning full-time to writing, and no wonder. Nearly everything he’s written has won literary awards. Fountain’s 2012 novel, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, won the National Book Critics’ Circle Award and was a finalist for the National Book Award. The novel was later adapted into a feature film by three-time Oscar winner Ang Lee. Devil Makes Three is Fountain’s third novel. He lives in Dallas, Texas with his wife of 32 years, Sharon Fountain.
October 21, 2023
Tough, Beguiling, Captivating: The Somewhat Devilish Path of Ben Fountain’s “Devil Makes Three”
“The country has a coup, and Tommy Rittenhouse throws a fuckfest.”
And there you have it. Early on, exactly at p. 12 of Devil Makes Three, Ben Fountain uses Matt, his major male character (of many, many important characters, both male and female) to sum something up about the state and status of Haiti in September of 1991.
Devil Makes Three is a long novel—531 sometimes grim, sometimes sexy, always human and thoroughly jam-packed pages—as well as a brilliant one. Written in the high-stakes, original and sometimes cockamamie prose that only Fountain has complete control over, he paints scene after scene of how life goes on—and ofttimes does not—when a sudden coup betrays a nation seemingly at last beginning to get its feet on the ground (and with the overwhelming support of its population). The military, known as FAdH, has deposed the recently and overwhelmingly elected President Jean Bertrand Aristide, seized power, thank you, and now that it’s in charge, will do whatever it takes to retain control.
Matt, an American and an experienced diver, runs a scuba-diving business in one of the beach areas a ways from the capital, along with his Haitian friend, Alix. Alix has a sister named Misha, who is a brilliant, sensitive, very-much-her own woman PhD student in the US whom Matt is in love with, and she and Alix are from an old and honorable Haitian family.
It doesn’t take long for the real madness to start. Before the day is out wherein Matt has made the above observation, he has been capriciously beaten by a suddenly arriving squad of the successful, well-armed and quite gung-ho military and his place of business has been laid waste. But the fun (I hope you understand irony) has barely begun.
There are other characters of course. Quite a few. Shelly Graver, for example, also known as Audrey. Shelly is a newly arrived employee to CIA Headquarters on Haiti and eager to make a name for herself. How, you may ask, is the CIA involved in Haiti? Well, you’d best count all those boxes upon boxes of munitions arriving nightly, under cover, at the airport. After all, what does the US think of the coup? Will they try to replace the military government at some point? To reinstall Aristide? This is late 1991, remember. A presidential election looms in the US. Therefore: what does President Bush think? So what does the contender, Clinton, think? Stay tuned!
Another of the major characters, Dr. Jean-Hubert Larocque, runs a hospital established to take care of the illnesses and misfortunes of the native Haitian people, partially funded by a variety of American donors. Under the fraught circumstances, Misha decides to forego her return to the US for graduate study and get a job at the hospital. Dr. Jean, a friend of the family, becomes her boss and later on, her . . . but never mind. (Just stay tuned!)
In fact, Voodoo itself (or Voudou, as you’ll become familiar with in the book) plays a sometimes major/sometimes minor role. As does Haitian French itself, but don’t fret: its meaning is cleverly rendered within a sentence or two.
And we mustn’t forget Commanding General Concers, the military officer at the top of the coup, who has developed a particular interest in Matt’s ocean-diving expertise and whisks him out of the prison where he’d been held (along with Alix, but don’t ask) to seek his help in trying to ferret out and recover the remains of the five hundred year-old, shipwrecked (he thinks), somewhere-right-off-the-Atlantic-coast-of-Haiti Santa Maria (Columbus’ flagship, don’t you know). (Gold! There’s gotta be gold in them there wrecks!)
So all these major characters—and many more—play serious roles in the outcome of this full-bore, jam-packed and nothing-short-of-brilliant novel by the multiple-award winning novelist, Ben Fountain.
“The country has a coup, and Tommy Rittenhouse throws a fuckfest.”
And there you have it. Early on, exactly at p. 12 of Devil Makes Three, Ben Fountain uses Matt, his major male character (of many, many important characters, both male and female) to sum something up about the state and status of Haiti in September of 1991.
Devil Makes Three is a long novel—531 sometimes grim, sometimes sexy, always human and thoroughly jam-packed pages—as well as a brilliant one. Written in the high-stakes, original and sometimes cockamamie prose that only Fountain has complete control over, he paints scene after scene of how life goes on—and ofttimes does not—when a sudden coup betrays a nation seemingly at last beginning to get its feet on the ground (and with the overwhelming support of its population). The military, known as FAdH, has deposed the recently and overwhelmingly elected President Jean Bertrand Aristide, seized power, thank you, and now that it’s in charge, will do whatever it takes to retain control.
Matt, an American and an experienced diver, runs a scuba-diving business in one of the beach areas a ways from the capital, along with his Haitian friend, Alix. Alix has a sister named Misha, who is a brilliant, sensitive, very-much-her own woman PhD student in the US whom Matt is in love with, and she and Alix are from an old and honorable Haitian family.
It doesn’t take long for the real madness to start. Before the day is out wherein Matt has made the above observation, he has been capriciously beaten by a suddenly arriving squad of the successful, well-armed and quite gung-ho military and his place of business has been laid waste. But the fun (I hope you understand irony) has barely begun.
There are other characters of course. Quite a few. Shelly Graver, for example, also known as Audrey. Shelly is a newly arrived employee to CIA Headquarters on Haiti and eager to make a name for herself. How, you may ask, is the CIA involved in Haiti? Well, you’d best count all those boxes upon boxes of munitions arriving nightly, under cover, at the airport. After all, what does the US think of the coup? Will they try to replace the military government at some point? To reinstall Aristide? This is late 1991, remember. A presidential election looms in the US. Therefore: what does President Bush think? So what does the contender, Clinton, think? Stay tuned!
Another of the major characters, Dr. Jean-Hubert Larocque, runs a hospital established to take care of the illnesses and misfortunes of the native Haitian people, partially funded by a variety of American donors. Under the fraught circumstances, Misha decides to forego her return to the US for graduate study and get a job at the hospital. Dr. Jean, a friend of the family, becomes her boss and later on, her . . . but never mind. (Just stay tuned!)
In fact, Voodoo itself (or Voudou, as you’ll become familiar with in the book) plays a sometimes major/sometimes minor role. As does Haitian French itself, but don’t fret: its meaning is cleverly rendered within a sentence or two.
And we mustn’t forget Commanding General Concers, the military officer at the top of the coup, who has developed a particular interest in Matt’s ocean-diving expertise and whisks him out of the prison where he’d been held (along with Alix, but don’t ask) to seek his help in trying to ferret out and recover the remains of the five hundred year-old, shipwrecked (he thinks), somewhere-right-off-the-Atlantic-coast-of-Haiti Santa Maria (Columbus’ flagship, don’t you know). (Gold! There’s gotta be gold in them there wrecks!)
So all these major characters—and many more—play serious roles in the outcome of this full-bore, jam-packed and nothing-short-of-brilliant novel by the multiple-award winning novelist, Ben Fountain.
October 22, 2024
In school, history bored me. I was always wondering what “regular people” were doing - how they managed through these grand events outlined in the textbooks. I wanted details. The textbooks gave few answers. Nor did most teachers.
(Well, it was a long time ago.)
I am old enough to remember these events. And I listened to the news (US). Daily. And still, I could not construct images in my mind of what life was for people uninvolved with the elections, coup, etc., beyond standard stereotypes. What I heard sounded as though we, the US, were basically sympathetic bystanders willing to help, but attempts were too often thwarted (older now, I’m better equipped to listen for what is not being said, and to know that’s where the real story lies).
A book like this stimulates my interest in history. Frequently I paused listening in order to research some of people and events. And, so what if the “regular people” are fictional? The verisimilitude is there. To me, that is a key accomplishment of this work.
We get to imagine in a realistic way how the lives of people of different classes and geographies, people with different interests and desires, were affected, as well as some of the strategies they needed to devise and revise to navigate situations when they had to interact with those having power, which itself was shifting with the wind. We only get a fleeting look at some of those characters, but the knowledge conveyed is as impactful as what we learn of, and from, the major characters And all if that embedded within local, national and international power structures all with conflicting goals, and all peopled with those willing to use unspeakable brutality to achieve those goals - from global ideological and economic hegemony down to local thugs who simply like it.
Well. I set out to give this a rating of 4.
Now that I’ve written this review, it’s clear that for me, it’s a 5.
Looking up other work by Ben Fountain now.
PS: the narration for the audiobook (Ron Butler) is excellent.
(Well, it was a long time ago.)
I am old enough to remember these events. And I listened to the news (US). Daily. And still, I could not construct images in my mind of what life was for people uninvolved with the elections, coup, etc., beyond standard stereotypes. What I heard sounded as though we, the US, were basically sympathetic bystanders willing to help, but attempts were too often thwarted (older now, I’m better equipped to listen for what is not being said, and to know that’s where the real story lies).
A book like this stimulates my interest in history. Frequently I paused listening in order to research some of people and events. And, so what if the “regular people” are fictional? The verisimilitude is there. To me, that is a key accomplishment of this work.
We get to imagine in a realistic way how the lives of people of different classes and geographies, people with different interests and desires, were affected, as well as some of the strategies they needed to devise and revise to navigate situations when they had to interact with those having power, which itself was shifting with the wind. We only get a fleeting look at some of those characters, but the knowledge conveyed is as impactful as what we learn of, and from, the major characters And all if that embedded within local, national and international power structures all with conflicting goals, and all peopled with those willing to use unspeakable brutality to achieve those goals - from global ideological and economic hegemony down to local thugs who simply like it.
Well. I set out to give this a rating of 4.
Now that I’ve written this review, it’s clear that for me, it’s a 5.
Looking up other work by Ben Fountain now.
PS: the narration for the audiobook (Ron Butler) is excellent.
March 29, 2024
Wow, what a surprising disappointment this novel was. I have read all of Ben Fountain's work before, and been mighty MIGHTY impressed. Having said that, this was not an example of his best work. I have spent much time in Haiti over four of its most dangerous years (2005-2009), and have published articles about the country and its struggles. So, as you can imagine, I was thrilled to immerse myself in this new novel “Devil Makes Three.”
For one thing it is in desperate need of an editor. So much nonsense stuff in here that seems to want to confirm that the writer knows Haiti.
But far and away the worst thing happens in the first third of the novel. Why, why WHY on page 130, in a heated discussion about Haiti's history, does the text read as follows (keep in mind that the character, Misha, is energetically arguing her case as a Haitian): "We beat the French, we beat the British and Spanish too, we beat all the great powers. A bunch of slaves, n******s, we fucked history then..."
How exactly does one, in a heated discussion , say: "A bunch of slaves, n asterisk asterisk asterisk asterisk asterisk s"? Why was the word removed from the mouth of a black woman in a heated moment? Much like when a boom mic dips into the screen of a film, my suspension of disbelief was ruined and I was quickly taken out and reminded that I was being written at! I was unable to nestle myself back into the narrative ever since. Among my friends who have worked in Haiti (for decades) and ones who’ve lived there their whole life, they were outraged when I showed them this passage. Surely what is going on in Haiti even today is far more serious than trying to please an imagined woke readership.
Funny that Fountain takes a cheap shot at Graham Greene's “The Comedians,” a far better novel by a far better writer who would never pull such nonsense.
I would hope this will be remedied in the paperback version.
For one thing it is in desperate need of an editor. So much nonsense stuff in here that seems to want to confirm that the writer knows Haiti.
But far and away the worst thing happens in the first third of the novel. Why, why WHY on page 130, in a heated discussion about Haiti's history, does the text read as follows (keep in mind that the character, Misha, is energetically arguing her case as a Haitian): "We beat the French, we beat the British and Spanish too, we beat all the great powers. A bunch of slaves, n******s, we fucked history then..."
How exactly does one, in a heated discussion , say: "A bunch of slaves, n asterisk asterisk asterisk asterisk asterisk s"? Why was the word removed from the mouth of a black woman in a heated moment? Much like when a boom mic dips into the screen of a film, my suspension of disbelief was ruined and I was quickly taken out and reminded that I was being written at! I was unable to nestle myself back into the narrative ever since. Among my friends who have worked in Haiti (for decades) and ones who’ve lived there their whole life, they were outraged when I showed them this passage. Surely what is going on in Haiti even today is far more serious than trying to please an imagined woke readership.
Funny that Fountain takes a cheap shot at Graham Greene's “The Comedians,” a far better novel by a far better writer who would never pull such nonsense.
I would hope this will be remedied in the paperback version.
January 17, 2024
I was disappointed. The plot sounded intriguing and the New York Times Book Review gave it such a glowing write-up that I had high hopes. It was in demand at the library and the Hold queue was long so I purchased a copy at full retail price from my neighborhood bookstore.
To me, the book read like something written in hopes that one of the streaming services would pick it up and and adapt it for a limited eight part series. The first clue to this intention was the unnecessary orgy scene right near the beginning. It appeared to be a completely gratuitous one-off, adding nothing to the plot. How many times have we seen streaming shows use sex as an attention grabber right near the beginning? Somebody is pitching this book to a streaming service right now, I'm positive.
The character development seemed stilted, I couldn't develop sympathy for any of the characters.
The plot could have been suspenseful but somehow it failed to build any tension.
There are some interesting fragments. The description of the scenery in Haiti and the challenges of the scuba diving and treasure hunt were the best part of the book for me and it definitely has visual potential for a TV series. The history of the politics and 1991 revolution were also interesting.
The book is so long and disjointed. I could almost see where each episode of a TV series would begin and end. If I had been able to borrow it from the library, I would have returned it after about the first 200 pages. But, since I had spent money on this book, I felt compelled to stick with it through the interesting AND boring parts, to the bitter end. All 531 pages.
Others may react differently to this book, but to me it was a waste of time and money. The best thing about purchasing this book is that I spent my dollars supporting a local book store.
To me, the book read like something written in hopes that one of the streaming services would pick it up and and adapt it for a limited eight part series. The first clue to this intention was the unnecessary orgy scene right near the beginning. It appeared to be a completely gratuitous one-off, adding nothing to the plot. How many times have we seen streaming shows use sex as an attention grabber right near the beginning? Somebody is pitching this book to a streaming service right now, I'm positive.
The character development seemed stilted, I couldn't develop sympathy for any of the characters.
The plot could have been suspenseful but somehow it failed to build any tension.
There are some interesting fragments. The description of the scenery in Haiti and the challenges of the scuba diving and treasure hunt were the best part of the book for me and it definitely has visual potential for a TV series. The history of the politics and 1991 revolution were also interesting.
The book is so long and disjointed. I could almost see where each episode of a TV series would begin and end. If I had been able to borrow it from the library, I would have returned it after about the first 200 pages. But, since I had spent money on this book, I felt compelled to stick with it through the interesting AND boring parts, to the bitter end. All 531 pages.
Others may react differently to this book, but to me it was a waste of time and money. The best thing about purchasing this book is that I spent my dollars supporting a local book store.
October 28, 2023
I expected this book to be a run of the mill spy thriller, but I was completely surprised at how exceptionally good it is. Fountain must have spent a lot of time in Haiti, because the richness and vibrancy of the settings and characters feel like being there.
Set in 1991 immediately after Aristide was deposed, the country is in chaos and warring factions are trying to gain control. Matt Amaker is an American ex pat running a scuba dive operation who is caught in the upheaval and whose life is violently disrupted. His close relationship with a Haitian American brings him into contact with powerful people who use him and his diving skills to try and enrich themselves.
There is of course a tough female CIA agent, numerous Haitian generals and their well armed soldiers, a beleaguered doctor in charge of a run down clinic, a gorgeous Haitian English literature major visiting her family while on leave from Brown University, and numerous other mostly oddball characters. The dialog is smart and there is a lot of Creole thrown in, but you don't have to translate it to get what's going on.
The main character here though is Haiti. A dismally poor Haiti that has been exploited over and over again throughout its history. In this story the wealthy Haitians share nothing with impoverished Haitians and divert aid sent from other countries into their own pockets for yachts and palaces. The military and political leaders fight each other for dominance and use weaponized militias to kill and intimidate whichever Haitians annoy them at any particular time. And the U.S. inserts itself everywhere, trying, often unsuccessfully and with disastrous consequences for innocent people, to maintain control.
Set in 1991 immediately after Aristide was deposed, the country is in chaos and warring factions are trying to gain control. Matt Amaker is an American ex pat running a scuba dive operation who is caught in the upheaval and whose life is violently disrupted. His close relationship with a Haitian American brings him into contact with powerful people who use him and his diving skills to try and enrich themselves.
There is of course a tough female CIA agent, numerous Haitian generals and their well armed soldiers, a beleaguered doctor in charge of a run down clinic, a gorgeous Haitian English literature major visiting her family while on leave from Brown University, and numerous other mostly oddball characters. The dialog is smart and there is a lot of Creole thrown in, but you don't have to translate it to get what's going on.
The main character here though is Haiti. A dismally poor Haiti that has been exploited over and over again throughout its history. In this story the wealthy Haitians share nothing with impoverished Haitians and divert aid sent from other countries into their own pockets for yachts and palaces. The military and political leaders fight each other for dominance and use weaponized militias to kill and intimidate whichever Haitians annoy them at any particular time. And the U.S. inserts itself everywhere, trying, often unsuccessfully and with disastrous consequences for innocent people, to maintain control.
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