For Americans in Sudan, Good Deeds Turn Sour

By MICHIKO KAKUTANI
ACTS OF FAITH
By Philip Caputo
669 pages. Alfred A. Knopf. $26.95.

Philip Caputo's devastating new novel, "Acts of Faith," will be to the era of the Iraq war what Graham Greene's novel "The Quiet American" became to the Vietnam era: a parable about American excursions abroad and the dangers of missionary zeal, a Conradian tale about idealism run amok, capitalistic greed sold as paternalistic benevolence, ignorance disguised as compassion.

The novel reads like a combination of Robert Stone (without the drugs), V. S. Naipaul (without the snobbery) and Joan Didion (without the staccato prose) - a modern day "Nostromo" that reverberates with echoes from today's headlines.

Set largely in the 1990's at the height of Sudan's civil war, "Acts of Faith" draws upon Mr. Caputo's firsthand knowledge of war (documented in his ferociously observed Vietnam memoir "A Rumor of War") and firsthand reportorial experience of Africa to tell the fictional story of two Americans who have come to Sudan to create new lives for themselves. Their avowed mission is to bring aid to the starving rebels (opposed to the hard-line Islamic government in Khartoum) but their real agenda is more personal and self serving.