Disturbance-Loving Species — Peter Chilson

In the tradition of Paul Theroux, Peter Chilsons fiction debut delivers a fascinating, heart-wrenching view of modern African culture, filtered through the lens of the West. The collection explores the experiences of Americans struggling to cope with life in Africa, and of Africans acclimating to life in the United States. In a novella and four short stories, Chilson uses a phrase borrowed from biology to point out how our "disturbanceloving species" thrives in the most chaotic, seemingly uninhabitable situations. In the opening novella, an idealistic young college graduate teaching in Niger witnesses his colleagues abduction by soldiers at gunpoint. "American Food," winner of the Gulf Coast Prize for fiction, finds a West African professor trying to preserve his culinary customs while living in a small Oregon town. Chilson, who went to Africa first as a Peace Corps volunteer and later as a freelance journalist, captures in vivid detail.