We Are Now Beginning Our Descent

Adam Kellas’s world—his life—is not just crumbling, but cracking. An aspiring novelist, Kellas was in the midst of writing a thriller about terrorists and destruction in September 2001 when real life overtook his fictional plot. The terrible events of 9/11 left him scarred, disconnected from the people around him and the meaningless passivity of words. Now headed to the battlefields of Afghanistan as a war correspondent, he drives himself toward action, seeking “some violent blow, inarticulate noise or mad mime-show of truth.”

In a country that is itself descending into chaos, however, Kellas is not the only broken soul. Astrid, an American journalist who is also struggling to keep her world from splitting apart, is another. As Kellas’s plane touches down in Kabul, the last thing on his mind is a relationship—and the last thing he hopes for is redemption.

Like his highly acclaimed The People’s Act of Love, James Meek’s We Are Now Beginning Our Descent is a novel that demands to be read and contemplated, its bold cinematic story and complex characters rooted in Meek’s own experience as an award-winning journalist. Moving from the mountains of Northern Afghanistan to London and the waterlands of east Virginia, We Are Now Beginning Our Descent is a tautly paced story of flawed individuals searching for perfect love, set against the incendiary politics and shifting ethics of our time.