Redeployment - Couverture souple

Klay, Phil

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0857864246 ISBN 13 : 9780857864246

Editeur : Canongate Books Ltd, 2015

A propos du livre

Extrait :

We shot dogs. Not by accident. We did it on purpose and we called it Operation Scooby. I’m a dog person, so I thought about that a lot.

First time was instinct. I hear O’Leary go, “Jesus,” and there’s a skinny brown dog lapping up blood the same way he’d lap up water from a bowl. It wasn’t American blood, but still, there’s that dog, lapping it up. And that’s the last straw, I guess, and then it’s open season on dogs.

At the time you don’t think about it. You’re thinking about who’s in that house, what’s he armed with, how’s he gonna kill you, your buddies. You’re going block by block, fighting with rifles good to 550 meters and you’re killing people at five in a concrete box.

The thinking comes later, when they give you the time. See, it’s not a straight shot back, from war to the Jacksonville mall. When our deployment was up, they put us on TQ, this logistics base out in the desert, let us decompress a bit. I’m not sure what they meant by that. Decompress. We took it to mean jerk off a lot in the showers. Smoke a lot of cigarettes and play a lot of cards. And then they took us to Kuwait and put us on a commercial airliner to go home.

So there you are. You’ve been in a no-shit war zone and then you’re sitting in a plush chair looking up at a little nozzle shooting air conditioning, thinking, what the fuck? You’ve got a rifle between your knees, and so does everyone else. Some Marines got M9 pistols, but they take away your bayonets because you aren’t allowed to have knives on an airplane. Even though you’ve showered, you all look grimy and lean. Everybody’s hollow eyed and their cammies are beat to shit. And you sit there, and close your eyes, and think.

The problem is, your thoughts don’t come out in any kind of straight order. You don’t think, oh, I did A, then B, then C, then D. You try to think about home, then you’re in the torture house. You see the body parts in the locker and the retarded guy in the cage. He squawked like a chicken. His head was shrunk down to a coconut. It takes you awhile to remember Doc saying they’d shot mercury into his skull, and then it still doesn’t make any sense.

Revue de presse :

* Extraordinarily powerful Washington Post * In Klay's hands, Iraq comes across not merely as a theater of war but as a laboratory for the human condition in extremis -- Michiko Kakutani New York Times * Will simultaneously break your heart and give you reasons to hope -- Ben Fountain * At times Redeployment recapitulates the remarkably tender, self-conscious style that Tim O'Brien forged from his experiences in Vietnam ... Mr Klay gives a deeply disquieting view of a generation of soldiers reared on war's most terrible contradictions Wall Street Journal * One of the great story collections of recent times -- Colum McCann * After the first reading I immediately began the second ... Truly haunting, and truly, indisputably, brilliant -- NIALL GRIFFITHS * Hilarious, biting and sad. It's the best thing written so far on what the war did to people's souls Scotsman * These are gorgeous stories - fierce, intelligent and heart-breaking -- Roxana Robinson, author of SPARTA * Redeployment is fiction of a very high order. These are war stories, written with passion and urgency and consummate writerly skill. There's a clarity here that's lacerating in its precision and exhilarating in its effects -- Patrick McGrath * Stunning, upsetting, urgently necessary -- Karen Russell, author of SWAMPLANDIA! * A must-read -- Anthony Swofford, author of JARHEAD * It hooks you in and doesn't let you go -- JAMES ROBERTSON, author of The Testament of Gideon Mack * Provocative and haunting ... Phil Klay is a powerful new voice and Redeployment stands tall with the best war writing of this decade -- SIOBHAN FALLON, author of You Know When the Men Are Gone * Sharp, intelligent, compelling Irish Times * Redeployment is the real thing - a vivid and vital battery of war stories that does not rely solely on its subject matter for impact (although, make no mistake, the subject certainly has impact) --Guardian

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Canongate Books Ltd
• Date d'édition: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0857864246
• ISBN 13: 9780857864246
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 304