Edwidge Danticat, The Dew Breaker

Now that Danticat, the youngest writer ever nominated for a National Book Award, is about to hit 35, maybe there’ll be less gushing about her age and more about her writing ability, which is considerable. The Haitian expat’s previous novel, The Farming of Bones, was a powerful account of a 1937 massacre in her homeland, and The Dew Breaker continues Danticat’s attempt to come to terms with the island’s terrible legacy of violence. Despite the euphonious name, a “dew breaker” is actually Haitian slang for the torturers employed by the old Duvalier regime—Danticat translated the Creole phrase to sound serene for maximum ironic effect. Her dew breaker is an old man, now living in America, whose history reveals itself in reverse over the course of the book as different characters remember him, usually with haunted eyes, from his days as a pain-wielding thug. Danticat’s too good a writer to leave us with easy answers. And, in fact, a twist toward the end of the book ensures only difficult questions remain in this pungent Carribbean take on the banality of evil.