“A dogged thriller with political bite. Herat recalls Robert Stone with his themes of morality, redemption, and uncrossable cultural boundaries. . . . In capturing a place and state of mind in which corruption is viewed as ‘the only breach against chaos,’ the London-based, Sri Lanka–rooted author has given us a book that won’t be easy to forget.”
―Kirkus Reviews

"One of the chilling pleasures of this book is Herat’s vivid, knowledgeable portrait of this threatening netherworld, from outposts like the Naga to breakaway states like Transnistria, where money is exchanged for advanced weaponry and private armies are assembled to rule in feudal power."
―Alden Mudge, BookPage

“Herat impresses on his first time out, with well-shaded characters and gripping suspense . . . this is worth seeking out.”
―Publisher’s Weekly

“Captivating, immersive, and arrestingly beautiful, Between This World and the Next holds you in its grip as it effortlessly navigates the complexities of our modern world.”
―Saleem Haddad, author of Guapa

“A hauntingly beautiful story of loss and war and the lives we build around them. Herat’s rendering of Cambodia is vivid, dark, and heartbreaking, as three-dimensional as any character. With echoes of Lawrence Osborne and Graham Greene, Between This World and the Next brutally and wrenchingly captures the consequences of modern amorality and the sacrifices we make for redemption. A tale that's determined not to let you go.”
― I.S. Berry, author of The Peacock and the Sparrow

*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.

British war photographer Joseph Nightingale, known to his colleagues as Fearless, is haunted by a brutal past and a present that has grown unrecognizable. Besieged by grief over the loss of his partner and unborn child, he travels to Cambodia, where a reunion with an old friend leads him to a young woman named Song. Imprisoned by circumstance, she, too, is longing for a past she can’t reconcile and grappling with the disappearance of her twin sister. Soon after their paths cross, Song vanishes, leaving behind only a mysterious videotape, and Fearless finds himself entangled in a web of transnational sex traffickers, corrupt power brokers, and ruthless arms dealers, where nothing and no one are what they seem.

In a place where human life is cheap and violence is just a means to an end, Fearless and Song must go to new lengths to confront their separate demons. Pulse-pounding and poignant, Between this World and the Next balances devastating cruelty with unexpected redemption. In this arresting page-turner, Praveen Herat blurs the boundaries between good and evil, asking us to reexamine complicity and the consequences of looking the other way.

Born in London to Sri Lankan parents and educated in the UK, Praveen Herat currently resides in Paris. But it was a three-year period living in Phnom Penh that marked him deeply as a writer. There, he grasped that his experience as a first-generation immigrant and itinerant emigrant, navigating constantly between the center and the periphery, had profound parallels with a number of quintessential contemporary experiences. The key protagonists in his novel Between This World and the Next manifest this in different ways: through struggling with the complex legacy of their mixed-race heritage; through the experience of being exiled from wider society as a slave, and through being consumed by the lust for status and power in the lawless void that followed the fall of Soviet communism. The product of a ten-year period of research and writing, the novel reflects the evolution of transnational crime across numerous locations, which include not only Cambodia but Ukraine, Dubai, and Liberia. it is the winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing.