“A beautifully written, Norman Mailer–like treatise on international politics, secret wars, espionage, and terrorism . . . A brilliant book, likely to win prizes, with echoes of Joseph Joseph Conrad, Graham Greene, and John le Carré.” —Booklist (Starred Review)

“In Shacochis’s powerful novel of sex, lies, and American foreign policy, 1990s Haiti, Nazi-occupied Croatia, and Cold War–era Istanbul are shown as places where people are pulled into a vortex of personal and political destruction . . . A brutal American-style le Carré, Shacochis details how espionage not only reflects a nation’s character but can also endanger its soul. Gritty characters find themselves in grueling situations against a moral and physical landscape depicted in rich language as war-torn, resilient, angry, evil, and hopeful.” —Publisher’s Weekly (Starred Review)

“Engrossing . . . a soaring literary epic about the forces that have driven us to the 9/11 age. . . . Shacochis darts around the globe over the span of five decades like a sorcerer of world history: Locations shift, time swirls, characters reappear in new disguises with new names. He’s always so relentlessly captivating that you don’t dare fall behind.” —Ron Charles, The Washington Post

“The Woman Who Lost Her Soul, a showstopper (and doorstopper) of a novel by Bob Shacochis, is an atlas of the ways political violence corrupts both the individual and national consciousness. Moving among multiple countries over the course of decades, it traces the failures, achievements, perversions and deceptions of late-20th-century American foreign policy. Over the course of its many pages, the prose is never less than lyrical, personal and intelligent, but the real reason to read is to witness the near superhuman ambition of Shacochis’ undertaking. If he were a rower, this would be a circumnavigation of the globe. If he were a sculptor, this would be Mount Rushmore. Lucky for us, he’s a writer and The Woman Who Lost Her Soul is a masterpiece.” —Anthony Marra, Salon (Ultimate Book Guide, 2013)

“This big beauty of a book was worth the wait. It’s tinglingly ambitious, vast in scope, and magnificently written. I could unerringly pick a Bob Shacochis sentence out of a police line-up of sentences, which is just about the highest praise I can offer to any writer.” —Michael Cunningham

“A love story, a thriller, a family saga, a historical novel, and a political analysis of America’s tragic misadventures abroad. The novel yokes the narrative drive of the best Graham Greene and le Carré to the rhetorical force and moral rigor of Faulkner . . . With a vision at once bitingly realistic and sweepingly romantic, Bob Shacochis has written what may well be the last Great American Novel. What other American writer has put as much heart into his creations, as much drive, as much history?” —Askold Melnyczuk, Los Angeles Review of Books

“This novel amounts to a prequel of sorts to the war on terror, an epic examination of American foreign policy and loss of innocence, a worthy successor to the darkest works of Graham Greene and John le Carré . . . Elegiac . . . is a searching and searing meditation on the questions someone might ask a century from now: Who were these Americans? How should history judge them? And us?” —Jane Ciabattari, Boston Globe

“A big book in every sense of the word . . . Shacochis is a master at the top of his game . . . In this novel, he gives us real, raw-edged characters and a narrative that grips the reader from the get-go. And he does it with such gleaming word-craft and such a sure hand that the reader’s utter engagement never falters. The book is a murder-mystery, a tale of political intrigue, a love story and a fraught father-daughter psychological saga. It was 10 years in the writing and it is a masterpiece . . . a brilliant, beautiful page-turner . . . luminous writing unfurls across every blood-spattered, sweat-speckled, dust-caked page and makes The Woman Who Lost Her Soul a riveting, heartbreaking and ravishing read. It’s a novel of uncommon grace and grit that lodges like shrapnel in the psyche and works its way surely to the reader’s heart, without ever losing sight of those ‘terrible intimacies.’” —Tallahassee Democrat

“The Woman Who Lost Her Soul was a long time coming, but critics are saying it was well worth the wait.” —NPR

“Shacochis could make anyone fall in love with history. With this magnum opus, he’s earned his own little piece of it.” —Entertainment Weekly (A)

“A masterful novel with the power to shake the bones of Graham Greene.” —Bruce Barcott, Outside Magazine

“Brilliantly unveils the darker regions of human sexuality, evoked inside a historical build-up of international political deceit.” —Jeffrey Hillard, Interview Magazine

“Bob Shacochis is the man for all syntheses, confabulating decades of time and volumetric immensities of geography into pitched and vivid dramatic narrative. Long in the making, but longer in the lasting, The Woman Who Lost Her Soul is unafraid of its ambitions. Shacochis is, in Glengarry-speak, a ‘closer.’” —Sven Birkerts

“The Woman Who Lost Her Soul will grab you from the first sentence and keep you gasping and laughing and weeping until the end. A murder mystery, a spy thriller and a Daddy and daughter story, it is a thrilling gripping lesson in the dynamics that have swept through our world in the 21st century. Shacochis writes like an angel, and in this novel of culture, betrayal and love he has found a perfect subject.” —Susan Cheever

“Shacochis raises morally tough questions within a significant political/historical frame, and his language is luscious.” —Library Journal (fall preview)