Shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel Award, The Catastrophist is a haunting novel set in the politically charged landscape of the Belgian Congo just before independence. At its heart is the passion between novelist James Gillespie and the fiery idealistic journalist Ines, whom he follows to Africa as their affair begins to fray. They are as unlike as lovers can be: He is willfully apolitical and desperate for her love, while she is obsessed with the unfolding drama, caught up in history, hero worship, and soon, a new passion. In a country that will self-destruct upon giving birth to itself, Gillespie is plunged into violence and betrayal, and moved by love to a final act of nobility. The Catastrophist delivers heart-stopping suspense, profound moral questioning, and a searing depiction of a doomed love.

Ronan Bennett was born and raised in Belfast, Ireland, and completed a doctorate in history. He has written several acclaimed screenplays, two nonfiction books, and three novels. The Catastrophist is his first to be published in the United States. He lives in London, England.

Prolouge sankuru river, december 1960What should I be looking at now? The Sankuru is not as wide as the Congo, not at this point at least where thebarquecrosses, but it has the same dull mud color, the same tinge of rust after rainfall, and there are the floating tangles of water hyacinth I know from Leopoldville. I have seen them here before, I have seen them in Stanley Pool and at the cataracts below the capital, I have seen them at Matadi where they debouch to the sea. The flowers are purple or magenta, some are powder blue. They are beautiful and malign, yet more parasites for this overleeched land. The rivers will never flush away these tokens of infection. The rain fell hard in the afternoon for two hours, forcing our absurd convoy off the road -- one more delay upon many. Soon after the sky cleared one of his aides claimed to have heard the engine of a spotter plane and there was general alarm, but when I looked there was nothing. What does it matter? We have reached the Sankuru. On the other side is safety, and he and Auguste and the others of the inner circle are already across. The air has cooled. These are the bewitching minutes of the red sunball and the palms where the pied crows roost, when the bamboo groans, and homeward lines of workers tread the dusty, pocked roads -- how far do these people walk in a single day? Near me, very near, a frog croaks. The cicadas are beginning their chorus. What else should I note here? I am the trained observer. Smells? Yes, there are things to smell. I can smell the fish the women have piled before them like neat mounds of twisted silver nails. I can smell the boiled eggs and thepilipiliand the fried manioc they have prepared in the hope of passing trade. And I smell the hot oil and exhaust fumes of the soldiers' lorries. On the far side of the river he waits with the old boatman.The soldiers come among us, or among them, for I am not truly part of this, and because my status, my ever-evasive presence, is manifest -- in spite of my visible wounds -- I do not have to be afraid in the way I can see the others are afraid. Ines is afraid, though not for herself. She stands by the sky-blue Peugeot in which Pauline and little Roland have been traveling for the last three days. The doors are open, the stifled occupants begging the breezes. In the back, Pauline holds the boy. Ines, like the others of our party, studies the soldiers' movements and glances for clues as to their intentions. So far, they have exhibited signs of a morose but unspecific hostility only: as long as their animus remains general and unexcited we may yet get across to join him. They stalk the cars and passengers. No one says anything. They come to Pauline's car. An officer recognizes her and demands, first in Lingala, then in French: "Ou est-il? Ou est-il?" Pauline remains silent. The officer's voice rises, sweat blisters on his forehead. A soldier reaches into the car and jerks Roland from his mother's grasp. A cry. Ines starts forward. Pauline is now out of the car, she sees only her child: the soldiers' guns mean nothing to her. There are high shouted words in one of their languages, interrogatory and uncompromising. A soldier raises his rifle butt and strikes Roland in the face. And now we know.What should I be looking at? Now that we know lives are at stake. A child's face has been broken but I have seen so much. I have seen bodies and blood. I have heard wailing and terror. I watch as though through a screen, I listen as though to a recording I might interrupt at will: the imprecations and pleas, the threats and the whimpers. I am thinking of the leprosy of politics, of the banality of this country and the low comedy of its calamities. I am thinking, actually, of Ruskin. Yes,Ruskin. And all of this makes me angry with Ines, for I should not be here and she should not be here: we