The Immaculate Invasion

Bob Shacochis

Penguin Books, 2000 - History - 408 pages

Bob Shacochis has been praised as a 'stunning' writer who 'summons the spirits of America and the Third World' (New York Newsday). Now, he brings to his first major work of reportage the worldview and political vision that have earned him comparisons with Graham Greene and V. S. Naipaul. Here is his eyewitness account of the 1994 invasion and occupation of Haiti, of American soldiers deployed into a strange war zone, 'where there are no friends and no enemies, no front or rear, no victories and, likewise, no defeats, and no true endings.' From the Pentagon's war room to the bitter infighting in the dangerously divided U.S. embassy in Port-au-Prince and its on again/off again relationship with terrorists, Shacochis chronicles what the military calls OTW Operations - other than war. Most enduring, from his eighteen months in the field in Haiti where he lived with a team of Special Forces commandos, Shacochis brings us the stories of soldiers, their exploits and frustrations, their inner lives as well as their heroic deeds, as they struggle to bring democracy to a country ravaged by tyranny. Not since Michael Herr's Dispatches has an American author of this stature written such a ground-eye view of soldiering, as intimate and telling as Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried.

What people are saying

THE IMMACULATE INVASION

User Review  - Kirkus

A brilliant account of the 1994 US invasion and occupation of Haiti. In 1991, Jean-Bertrand Aristide became the first democratically elected president of Haiti. No sooner had he taken office when he ...

The immaculate invasion

User Review  - Not Available - Book Verdict

With the flair of a novelist (see his Swimming in the Volcano), Shacochis offers a firsthand account of the 1994 liberation of Haiti, when a U.S. military juggernaut at last returned Aristide to power ...

Contents

• The Day You See Me Fall Is Not the Day I: 1
• Repression Works: 12
• Cowboy Heaven: 25

About the author

Bob Shacochis is an American author and journalist. He was born in Pennsylvania on September 9, 1951, and grew up in McLean Virginia. He was educated at the University of Missouri, and the Iowa Writer's Workshop at the University of Iowa. He currently teaches creative writing at Florida State University. Shacochis's first collection of stories, Easy in the Islands won the National Book Award for first work of fiction. His second collection, The Next New World was awarded the Prix de Rome from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His novel, Swimming in the Volcano was a finalist for the 1993 National Book Award. Shacochis has been a contributing editor for Outside and Harper's, and has been a columnist and writer for several national publications, including GQ magazine.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Immaculate Invasion
• Author: Bob Shacochis
• Edition: reprint
• Publisher: Penguin Books, 2000
• ISBN: 0140248951, 9780140248951
• Length: 408 pages
• Subjects: History / Military / General