The Water Cure »

Percival Everett is a professor of English at the University of Southern California and the author of sixteen books, including American Desert, Erasure, and Glyph. He lives in Los Angeles.

I am guilty not because of my actions, to which I freely admit, but for my accession, admission, confession that I executed these actions with not only deliberation and premeditation but with zeal and paroxysm and purpose . . .

The true answer to your question is shorter than the lie.

Did you? I did.

This is a confession of a victim turned villain. When Ishmael Kidder's eleven-year-old daughter is brutally murdered, it stands to reason that he must take revenge by any means necessary. The punishment is carried out without guilt, and with the usual equipment—duct tape, rope, and superglue. But the tools of psychological torture prove to be the most devastating of all.

Percival Everett's most lacerating indictment to date, The Water Cure follows the gruesome reasoning and execution of revenge in a society that has lost a common moral ground, where rules are meaningless. A master storyteller, Everett draws upon disparate elements of Western philosophy, language theory, and military intelligence reports to create a terrifying story of loss, anger, and helplessness in our modern world. This is a timely and important novel that confronts the dark legacy of the Bush years and the state of America today.

The Washington Post - Jim Krusoe

So while The Water Cure is most decidedly a novel, it is also a meditation on what it means to be a victim and a torturer at the same time. In his finest book to date, Everett combines in his narrator, Ishmael Kidder, a man pursued by furies (some of his own making—he had left his wife before his daughter was killed) and one who speaks with a cool sense of detachment…this is a book that not only makes you feel, but think.