Denis Johnsons The Laughing Monsters is a high-suspense tale of kaleidoscoping loyalties in the post- world that shows one of our great novelists at the top of his game Roland Nair calls himself Scandinavian but travels on a US passport After ten years absence he returns to Freetown Sierra Leone to reunite with his friend Michael Adriko They once made a lot of money here during the countrys civil war and curious to see whether good luck will strike twice in the same place Nair has allowed himself to be drawn back to a region he considers hopeless Adriko is an African who styles himself a soldier of fortune and who claims to have served at various times the Ghanaian army the Kuwaiti Emiri Guard and the American Green Berets Hes probably broke now but he remains at thirty-six as stirred by his own doubtful schemes as he was a decade ago Although Nair believes some kind of money-making plan lies at the back of it all Adrikos stated reason for inviting his friend to Freetown is for Nair to meet Adrikos fiancxee a grad student from Colorado named Davidia Together the three set out to visit Adrikos clan in the Uganda-Congo borderland--but each of these travelers is keeping secrets from the others Their journey through a land abandoned by the future leads Nair Adriko and Davidia to meet themselves not in a new light but rather in a new darkness.
