Briefly Noted Book Reviews – The New Yorker

Dark Mirror, by Barton Gellman (Penguin Press). In 2013, the author, reporting for the Washington Post, was among those who brought to light the trove of top-secret N.S.A. files leaked by Edward Snowden. Here he delves even deeper into the maze of government secrecy and surveillance, but at the books core is his wary, exasperating relationship with his source, who slides between principled candor, exaggeration, and evasion. Gellman takes us through his efforts while reporting to weigh the publics right to know against the need for secrecy on national-security matters, as he carefully charts the course toward transparency. Even so, when an N.S.A. spokesperson accuses him of being in love with your source, he takes seriously the possibility that her words might bear some truth.

The Compton Cowboys, by Walter Thompson-Hernndez (William Morrow). The history of African-American ranching in California has its roots in the westward migration following the Civil War. This vivid group portrait of contemporary black cowboys at Richland Farms, in Compton, is a story both of heritage and of urban unrest, gang violence, and confrontations with the police. The Compton Cowboys met, in the eighties and nineties, in a youth horseback-riding program mostly funded by white donors. Taking over the ranch as adults, they sought to reclaim the legacy of black cowboys. Their activities, the author shows, sparked a culture clash in the wider community, but they have also revived interest in the black cowboy life style, indelibly captured in the Cowboys motto: Streets raised us. Horses saved us.

Man of My Time, by Dalia Sofer (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). The ruptures of the 1978 Iranian Revolution govern the life of Hamid, the stoic narrator of this novel, which shuttles between the past and the present day. Working for years as a government interrogator, Hamid became estranged from his family, who fled to America. But on a trip to New York, accompanying a government minister on a diplomatic mission, Hamid visits his mother, who asks him to fulfill his fathers wish to have his ashes scattered in Iran. Sofer shows how one generations revolt gives rise to anothers. At one point, Hamid, asking the minister for reassurance that historys disturbances will resolve into peace, is told instead that the world is inclining toward darkness.

Tropic of Violence, by Nathacha Appanah, translated from the French by Geoffrey Strachan (Graywolf). This novel by a Mauritian-French writer takes place off the coast of Mozambique, on the island of Mayotte, which is officially part of France, and by far its poorest region. Migrants flock to Mayotte despite its poverty, in the hope of acquiring French passports. In Appanahs sobering story, a baby boy, Mose, abandoned by his migrant mother, is adopted by a nurse, grows into a rebellious adolescent, and becomes entangled with a sadistic teen-age gang leader. Appanah offers a portrait of a place both beautiful and brutal, suggesting that Mayotte, damaged by colonization, corruption, poverty, and neglect, is fated to afflict its inhabitants in turn.

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Briefly Noted Book Reviews - The New Yorker