Between This World and the Next

Winner of the 2022 Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, Praveen Herat's gripping international thriller is a breathtaking exploration of power, identity, unconditional love, and the question of how far we'll go to uncover the truth.

Besieged by grief, a British war photographer called Fearless travels to Cambodia, attempting to come to terms with a past that haunts him and a present that has grown unrecognizable. There, a surreal night and a brush with death lead him to Song, a young Cambodian woman grappling with the mounting psychological and physical scars left by a lifetime of poverty and violence. But when Song mysteriously disappears, it's up to Fearless to piece together the clues, and he finds himself entangled in a web of transnational crime, arms dealing, sex trafficking, and corruption, where nothing and no one are what they seem. Fearless and Song go to new lengths to protect and care for each other in a world where unimaginable atrocities are just a means to an end. As they navigate this brutal terrain in pursuit of truth and justice, it is their unexplainable, though undeniable, bond that gets them through. Pulse-pounding and poignant, Between this World and the Next balances unforgettable moments of brutality with scenes of devastating softness. In this arresting, gut-wrenching page-turner, Praveen Herat blurs the boundaries between good and evil, inviting readers to reexamine complicity and the consequences of looking the other way.