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In her brilliant debut, Allison Alsup crafts a flawless and propulsive novel about a green American vice-consul in 1918 China who is sent to find a missing Dutch explorer. Samuel Sokobin is tormented by memories of his fighter-pilot brother, lost over the English Channel in the Great War. This novel—its deft psychological turns, sure prose, and keen plotting—is the work of a seasoned artist. It holds its own with the colonial novels of Graham Greene and J.M. Coetzee. It will win prizes.