Bush Pigs — Richard Dooling

Originally published in the New Yorker, this harrowing tale of reverse culture shock is a cult favorite among expats who wander abroad and are unprepared for the shock that awaits them upon return to the first world. After three years in the bush, a Peace Corps Volunteer is evacuated from war-torn Sierra Leone and sent home to Omaha, Nebraska, where he attempts to celebrate his return in a steak house. What happens next is called reverse culture shock. G.K. Chesterton put it this way: The whole object of traveling abroad is not to set foot on foreign land; it is to set foot on one's own country as a foreign land when one returns.By Richard Dooling, author of White Man's Grave, a novel, a finalist for the National Book Award.