Sleeping Rough in Port-au-Prince is fascinating yet challenging to consume. Captivating in so much as the subject matter, how street children survive in the Haitian capital, can be viewed as compelling and of great interest; yet, it can be an overwhelming book to absorb due to the delicate nature of the study that Kovats-Bernat presents the reader. It is a text which confronts sensibilities and invites introspection. In his introduction, Kovats-Bernat is clear when sharing his own limitations as an anthropologist with regards to his research. From the onset, he explains to the reader the degree to which he has questioned his own ability to be objective and confesses that, while working with violent street children, he has acted outside the customary bounds of an objective researcher (p. 10). Making his limitations known is actually one of this author's strengths. On several occasions he is keen to aid us in understanding that working with street children, and their everyday milieu, is something which has challenged the rules within which much anthropological work is done. However, the appearance of this text and its message makes manifest his interest in showing the reader these children's place within Haiti and the wider Western World.

Sleeping Rough in Port-au-Prince combines a series of brief life stories, short vignettes if you like, with an analysis that serves as a sort of a springboard with which to comment on Haitian society and its capital city while entering into dialogue with other contemporaries in his field (such as Tobias Hecht). Though brief and sometimes leaving the reader with a want for more information (though the author has warned us that such brevity is due to the nature of the subject he is studying), these life stories are appropriate windows into lives of street children and their culture. The author's ability to paint a face upon and a soul in those often forgotten/ignored by leaders and society in general is one of the redeeming qualities of this text.

Kovats-Bernat focuses on youths, particularly males, between the ages of four and 20 (though he does include some sections on girls living on the street) in order to portray their relation between private and public spaces, the local economy, and the power structures that exist around them. This book does its best to deconstruct the many myths that exist around these children; that they are interested in working for their sustenance and shun begging as a livelihood. Sleeping Rough in Port-au-Prince also explains how many children come to live on the street and reveals, perhaps unexpectedly, that many street children have family – albeit extended in many cases – with which the children maintain some form of continued contact. In addition to these family relationships, Kovats-Bernat's book portrays several of the meaningful family-like relationships that street children form among themselves as coping mechanisms and survival techniques. Indeed, the text is quite effective in depicting the human side of its subject matter.

However, not all is rosy in this book. Some of the more captivating material concerns the darker sides of these children's lives. One of the more striking ethnographies describes the life of Bèl Marie, a girl who tragically loses both parents at the age of six, goes to live with an aunt, is attacked without provocation by her cousin and is too scared to return to her family's home for fear the incident might be repeated. As one of his limited studies on girls living on the street, this tragedy – somewhat reminiscent of the Brazilian Carolina Maria de Jesus – forces the reader to question the reasons one might normally give for children living on the street and the role larger institutions play in leaving them there.

Kovats-Bernat's section on lagè domi or ‘sleeping wars’ likewise portrays one of the grittier aspects of life on the street covered in this text. The anthropologist uses Michel's account as a platform to show us how children often resolve conflict by attacking rivals while they are sleeping: harming, maiming or even killing them in often escalating attacks which can be sparked by events so seemingly small as being unwilling to share charity given to a fellow street child. What is striking is the fact that Kovats-Bernat explains that death in lagè domi is most often accidental, the real purpose appearing to be to incapacitate one's opponent to such a point that he or she is unable to work and so must either live with further depravation or lower him or herself to beg for substance (p. 135). Possibly even more eye-opening is the author's assertion that children are not generally afraid of death as a result of a lagè domi but do fear becoming maimed in the process which could lead to the possibility of losing their ability to labour, and thus their autonomy. This observation poignantly demonstrates the children's desire not to panhandle in order to survive as well as their attitudes with respect to life and death in their social context.

The use of the Haitian Krèyol language plays a role worth comment. On practically every page of Sleeping Rough one encounters the use of this language and normally a brief translation of its meaning. Kovats-Bernat has been kind in so much that he provides a running translation of most Krèyol words and does not require us to make use of an extensive glossary - which might have been another, more cumbersome, alternative. This peppering of the text with bits of Haitian reality, as it were, seems to link the reader to the more concrete reality in which the researcher worked and appears to attempt to bring the reader closer to the subject at hand. However, it is significant that the majority of the Krèyol which is used in Sleeping Rough has some kind of negative aspect to it. Either it directly links us to a negative reality or is some type of reaction to a negative element in the Haitian environment. While being one of the intriguing components of the text, it begs the question as to why Krèyol is used in this manner. Is it because the author really wishes to create an emotional distance for us with regard to the negative experience by using a language unfamiliar to most, or is it that he wishes to bring us closer to it by implying with the use of Krèyol that the reader must discover what is untranslatable about these utterances? Possibly it is simply a form of costumbrismo or, most likely, something else altogether.

This text does utilise its conclusion to underline some of what it believes to be the wider causes and implications of the plight of street children in Haiti. There are many and encompass a large field of possibilities. Kovats-Bernat engages with his subject matter, others in his field, and the reader, and he does so in a stimulating and inviting manner.