Missile Paradise

(Paperback)

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In the Marshall Islands, American engineers and programmers are making and testing missiles while the indigenous Marshallese sweep their streets and clean their houses. It's 2004, the Iraq war is heating up and 9/11 is fresh in everyone's minds. Following four interconnected story lines - a burned-out cultural liaison, a crippled programmer, a young widow and a Marshallese teenager - Missile Paradise is a satirical novel about the clash of cultures between the Americans trying to realise their American Dream, and the Marshallese who are bedazzled and angered by it.

Reviews

Tanner...brings this microcosm of human folly and valor to captivating realization with bracing insights, tangy humor, profound respect, and rebounding resonance.--Booklist (Starred Review)

"The themes here are major--global warming, imperialism, America's role in the world (the story is set soon after the Abu Ghraib prison scandal). But Tanner displays a light touch, favoring snappy dialogue over didacticism. The result is winning."--Kirkus

Tanner...is at his best when depicting the very human flaws, obsessions, and prejudices his characters face, all against a vivid island background where summer never seems to end and social progress is at a standstill.--Publishers Weekly

A moving, ethnologically brilliant tale of imperialism and insularity, this is one of those rare novels that actually opens our eyes. Wonderful stuff.--Joseph O'Neill, author of Netherland and The Dog

Ron Tanner's imagination astounds me. It's been a long time since I've met a group of characters as uniquely flawed and uniquely enthralling as those who populate his fabulously tragicomic novel MISSILE PARADISE. You will follow them to the ends of the earth to find out what happens--and I mean that just about literally.--Julia Glass, winner of the National Book Award, author of Three Junes

Ron Tanner is a gripping and transformative writer and Missile Paradise is exactly the sort of novel I want to read, stepping away from America to look back at it with a fresh set of eyes and recalibrate the lens through which we define who we are.--Bob Shacochis, National Book Award winner, Pulitzer Prize nominee, author of The Woman Who Lost Her Soul

Missile Paradise is a breathtaking example of narrative control, the way Ron Tanner so effortlessly weaves his threads together. This is a unique, complex, and compelling story--unlike anything I've read before.-Kevin Wilson, author of The Family Fang