A Door in the Earth

"A teeming panoply...layers moving storytelling onto penetrating reportage...Waldman is particularly gifted at giving tangible reality to ethical dilemmas...Few contemporary authors have shown so expertly that well-intentioned intervention can be the most dangerous kind of all."—Lara Feigel, New York Times Book Review

"Waldman has crafted a story that doesn't shrink from moral ambiguity and difficult questions."—Joumana Khatib, New York Times

"In her illuminating second novel, Waldman unpeels layers of cultural conditioning to explore the American use of 'kind power.'"—BBC

"Amy Waldman's penetrating second novel speaks truth to power."—Leigh Haber, O, The Oprah Magazine

"Waldman writes about the clash of cultures and ideals with clean-lined grace and quiet eye-level empathy."—Entertainment Weekly

"Waldman's characters are fully realized individuals, as morally complex as the choices facing them...Waldman is that rare novelist who writes from both the head and heart, combining high moral seriousness with moments of irony and humor. In A Door in the Earth, she has created a novel as moving as it is provocative."—Elizabeth Toohey, Christian Science Monitor

"Waldman delivers a breathtaking and achingly nuanced examination of the grays in a landscape where black and white answers have long been the only currency. A bone-chilling takedown of America's misguided use of soft power."—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"A deeply well-informed, utterly engrossing, mischievously disarming, and stealthily suspenseful tale...Every aspect of this complex and caustic tale of hype and harm is saturated with insight and ruefulness."—Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)

"A Door in the Earth is a deeply chilling, multifaceted examination of not just the situation in Afghanistan but also the more pernicious and complex consequences of awakening the sleeping giant that is America."—Stephenie Harrison, Bookpage (starred review)

"Waldman's moral vision, spare and unsparing prose style, and feel for the way history upsets settled lives all make A Door in the Earth one of the essential books of the post-9/11 era."—George Packer, National Book Award winner for The Unwinding

"Amy Waldman brings her fierce intelligence and breathtaking descriptive powers to bear in this brilliant, unsentimental novel."—Nell Freudenberger, New York Times bestselling author of Lost and Wanted

"Some stories stick with you, becoming like your own memories. When I finished the last page of this book I could've sworn it had all happened to me."—Elliot Ackerman, National Book Award finalist for Dark at the Crossing

"Potent...Waldman paints a blistering portrayal of the misguided aspirations and convenient lies that have fed the war in Afghanistan. This is an impressive novel.—Publishers Weekly