• 2008 Whiting Writers' Award
• 2007 National Book Award Fiction Finalist

• Fieldwork, (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) 2007

Why, why, why would a company publish a book this good and then practically demand that people not read it? Why should this book go to waste? Is it because there are people in publishing who believe that readers who liked The Memory Keeper's Daughter are too dumb to enjoy a killer novel like Fieldwork? If so, shame on them for their elitism. Letting ''Fieldwork'' go to waste | The Pop of King | Books | Entertainment Weekly

Early in Mischa Berlinski's gripping and entertaining first novel there is a piece of postmodern skittishness which points to a truth that novelists shy away from: their trade embarrasses them. When you first start making things up, you expect that someone is going to tell you to stop.