The Village of Waiting [Paperback]

Back in print, the masterful (The New York Times Book Review) account of an American in West Africa

Now restored to print with a new Foreword by Philip Gourevitch and an Afterword by the author,The Village of Waitingis a frank, moving, and vivid account of contemporary life in West Africa. Stationed as a Peace Corps instructor in the village of Lavi? (the name means wait a little more ) in tiny and underdeveloped Togo, George Packer reveals his own schooling at the hands of an unforgettable array of townspeoplepeasants, chiefs, charlatans, children, market women, cripples, crazies, and those who, having lost or given up much of their traditional identity and fastened their hopes on development, find themselves trapped between the familiar repetitions of rural life and the chafing monotony of waiting for change.

GEORGE PACKERis a staff writer atThe Atlanticand the author ofThe Assassins Gate: America in Iraq, which received several prizes and was named one of the ten best books of 2005 byThe New York Times Book Review. He is also the author of two novels,The Half ManandCentral Square, and two other works of nonfiction, includingBlood of the Liberals, which won the 2001 Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. His play,Betrayed, ran for five months in 2008 and won the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Play. His most recent book isOur Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century. He lives in Brooklyn.

Lovely in its feeling for the people and realistic in its assessment of the African situations, this is a first-rate piece of social reportage.Irving Howe

[A] fond and angry account...An impressively unself-righteous and questioning work of intimate introduction, in which each dislocation of hope and breakdown of sense matters. Truthful throughout.The New Yorker

Glowing...A masterful book.The New York Times Book Review