Doug Reeler
A satirical novel about international aid and philanthropy.Desperate to avoid a humdrum life, Alice follows a white rabbit and accidentally tumbles down a hole into DevelopmentLand. Soon, she is taken on as an intern by a weary band of idealists who began arriving a few decades ago to fix the planet but have never found an exit strategy. Introduced to the Towers, she encounters donors, politicians and people with yachts, who have mastered the art of transformation... of structural theft into strategic generosity.Through sixteen sharp and unruly dispatches, Alice wanders through DevelopmentLand in her sceptical but sensible shoes, from the glossy conferences and seminars of the Towers to the grubby end of town and country, from measurement-obsessed donors and tax-avoiding corporates to the Cracks, where she meets defiant farmers, land activists and seed-saving grandmothers resisting corporate land grabs and a Queen’s law that criminalises their indigenous seeds. What begins as bewilderment at aid’s rituals becomes a search for the truth of the work, and what real change asks of us when the elaborate theories and frameworks of DevelopmentLand start to flounder in the stormy seas of reality.In the end, Alice has to choose: cling to the Towers, all conferences and canapés, or commit to the Cracks where revolution is fermenting.A book the donors would rather you left on the shelf, The Misadventures of Alice in DevelopmentLand is a hilarious romp through international aid and philanthropy, a political provocation, and a story for anyone dreaming of making a difference in our unravelling world. 6
