Fieldwork Reading Guide & Discussion Questions

Book Club Discussion Questions

Print PDF

For supplemental discussion material see our Beyond the Book article, Thailand and our BookBrowse Review of Fieldwork.

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

About this Guide
The following author biography and list of questions about Fieldwork are intended as resources to aid individual readers and book groups who would like to learn more about the author and this book. We hope that this guide will provide you a starting place for discussion, and suggest a variety of perspectives from which you might approach Fieldwork.


About the Book
When his girlfriend takes a job in Thailand, Mischa Berlinski goes along for the ride, planning to enjoy himself and work as little as possible. But one evening a fellow expatriate tips him off to a story: a charismatic American anthropologist, Martiya van der Leun, has been found dead--a suicide--in the Thai prison where she was serving a life sentence for murder. Curious at first, Mischa is soon immersed in the details of her story. This brilliant, haunting novel expands into a mystery set among the Thai hill tribes, whose way of life became a battleground for the missionaries and the scientists living among them.


Discussion Questions

1. How does it affect your reading of the novel that the narrator's name is the same as the author's? Do you imagine them to be the same person?
2. "A child needs the happy family," Elena tells Mischa (pg. 23) in an attempt to describe why Martiya's life turned out as it did. “It is the base." Do you see a connection between Martiya's parents' marriage, the atmosphere in which she was raised, and her desire to immerse herself in the life of the Dyalo, or any of her other decisions as an adult?
3. How does it change the story to hear so much of Martiya's story from other characters? Do those who tell Mischa about Martiya—Tim Blair, for example, or Josh O' Connor—seem reliable to you?
   Why do you think the author chose to include them in the story, rather than just telling Martiya's story entirely from Mischa's perspective?

Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Picador. Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.