BREAKING NEWS... Helen Benedict will be reading and signing THE EDGE OF EDEN at PEN West in Berkeley, California on Sat. Sept. 11 at 3 p.m. For details click APPEARANCES above.

Listen to Benedict's recent radio essay on NPR:www.publicbroadcasting.net/wamc/news.newsmain/article/7288/0/1680882/Academic.Minute/Prof..Helen.Benedict..Columbia.University

See Benedict's PBS blog at www.pbs.org/pov/regardingwar/conversations/women-and-war/

Inspired by her parents' anthropological field notes, Benedict has set her fifth novel in 1960, on the tropical Seychelles Islands off the eastern coast of Africa. Her lush descriptions of life on the islands are firmly based in the realities of the time. The role of magic in Seychelles culture, passed down from the country's past as a former slave colony, and the decaying culture of British colonialism's last gasp form the background of this witty, sharp, yet heartbreaking novel about a family unraveling and a child's desperate attempts to save it.

Praise for The Edge of Eden:
"An armchair traveler's delight, Benedict's novel is an amusingly poignant look at the British abroad in the spirit of Evelyn Waugh." (Publishers Weekly, Sept. 2009)

"Benedict offers an engaging, lush portrait of envy, desire, and the insatiable lure of the exotic and unknown." (Booklist, Oct. 2009)

"Benedict... offers distinctive cross-cultural insights as well as a cadre of satiric and fascinating characters, and the result is a story that is both touching and humorous. Highly recommended." (Library Journal, Nov. 1, 2009)

"Not since Lord of the Flies has a novelist written with such preceptiveness about the potention for harm that lurks within the innocence of childhood... That Benedict could accomplish this in an ambitious novel about colonialism and the effects of war makes this feat all the more dazzling. Her portrait of the generation of British parents that came of age during World war II is smart, original and unflinching." (Paula Sharp, author of Crows over a Wheatfield)

For Benedict's Washington Post article about Seychelles and global warming, go to: www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/20/AR2009112002973.html

For a Radio Blog interview of Benedict about The Edge of Eden, go to
www.blogtalkradio.com/ColumbiaJournalism/2009/11/03/Helen-Benedict

For a new profile of Benedict, go to www.chronogram.com/issue/2009/10/Books/North-of-Eden

READ MORE ABOUT THE EDGE OF EDEN. www.sohopress.com/new-books/the-edge-of-eden

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The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq
Beacon Press, April 2009 (paperback April 2010)

More women soldiers are fighting in Iraq than in any other American war in history, yet they face a dual challenge: they are participating in combat more than ever before, but because only one in ten soldiers is female, they are often painfully alone. This isolation, along with a military culture hostile to women, denies them the camaraderie soldiers depend on for survival and subjects them to sexual persecution by their comrades. As one soldier said, "I ended up waging my own war against an enemy dressed in the same uniform as mine."

"Benedict’s brilliant reporting is neither left nor right—it’s human. . . . [These women] are your mother, sister, cousin, daughter. Their stories of injustice in the U.S. military will tear your guts out."
—Dale Maharidge, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of And Their Children After Them