More than six years ago, novelist Scott Turow visited the Netherlands, where he was subjected to some serious peer pressure.
At a cocktail party, several lawyers told the novelist and former federal prosecutor, “You’ve got to write a book about the International Criminal Court and the Hague,” Mr. Turow recalled during a telephone interview.
The party for Mr. Turow was hosted by his friend Fay Hartog-Levin, who was U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands (2009-11). The author, who still practices law, has an insatiable appetite for fiction with an international flavor. So, it’s not surprising that he warmed to the idea.
The International Criminal Court, he said, was created because world leaders recognized that war and genocide would continue.
“Societies will fall apart. ... And when that happens, horrible things occur,” the writer said.
The Chicago native speaks at 7 p.m. Wednesday in Carnegie Library Lecture Hall, Oakland, as part of the New & Noted series presented by Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures.
His new book, “Testimony,” is a legal thriller set in the Hague, home of the International Criminal Court. The main character, 50-year-old Bill ten[cq] Boom, has divorced his wife, left his law firm and moved to the Netherlands.
At the International Criminal Court, he investigates the disappearance of an entire village of Roma people during the Bosnian War. The case takes him to a salt mine in Bosnia, Vienna and back to the U.S., where he consults with colleagues and a disgraced U.S. Army general.
Mr. Turow’s fascination with the Roma people goes back 40 years when one of his relatives lay dying in a Chicago hospital at the same time a leader of Chicago’s Roma community was gravely ill.
“There were all these local Roma camped out in the hospital,” Mr. Turow said. After the Roma leader died, “The Roma were gone, but so were all the ashtrays.”
He was utterly mystified.
“Now what group of people on Earth does something like this to themselves, knowing that it is so logically counterproductive? The next time somebody is sick, you can be sure the hospital will figure out a way not to treat them. What are the values that impel that kind of, in many ways, self-defeating behavior?”
The Roma, Mr. Turow said, “are harder to understand in terms of their motivation than any other group of people that I know of.”
Accompanied by an interpreter, he visited a Roma village in Bosnia, where he spent several days talking with Roma families.
“The people I met with in Bosnia were lovely. A number had been employed in the U.S. military bases. They spoke English. They generally felt good about the United States and Americans. They were still living their own life,” he said.
But he left the Roma village wondering, “Why do you want half the chassis of a Chevrolet Impala on the roof of the second floor of your home?”
Tickets to the lecture are $33 and include a copy of “Testimony.” Information: pittsburghlectures.org or 412-622-8866.
Marylynne Pitz: mpitz@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1648 or on Twitter: @mpitzpg.
First Published: May 14, 2017, 4:00 a.m.
