How to Love a Rat

How to Love a Rat takes place in a Cambodian minefield. Working amid the danger of hidden bombs, former war combatants use explosive-sniffing rats to clear mines from the land. In total, an estimated four to six million landmines in Cambodia have been left behind by wars that ended decades ago. This has created the conditions for a flourishing mine clearance industry, where workers who were once enemy combatants may now be employed on the same clearance teams.

Zeroing in on two distinct sets of feelings, Darcie DeAngelo paints a portrait of the love experienced between humans and rats, as well as the suspicions felt between former adversaries turned coworkers. In doing so, she points to how human-animal relationships in the minefield produce models for relationality among people from opposing sides of war. The deminers' love for the rats mediates both the traumatic violence of the past and the uncertain dangers of the minefield. The book's stories depict an emergent and transformative postwar ecology that has developed through human-nonhuman relationships, including those shared between humans and rats, landmines, and spirits.