Talking & reading about war
To better understand the experiences of our veterans who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Oconee Democrats' community book group is reading Phil Klay's "Redeployment: Stories" in July. While the book is fiction and relatively new, it's already being called a classic and one of the best books ever written about war. The author, a U.S. Marine, served in Iraq's Anbar Province for more than a year. The book has received stellar reviews — and lots of awards, including the National Book Award for Fiction. Here's the citation accompanying Klay's National Book Award: In these thematically linked stories, Phil Klay creates a kaleidoscopic vision of conflict and homecoming. With a strikingly original set of voices, Klay inhabits the hearts of grunts, mortuary workers, chaplains, psy-ops officers, and civilian bureaucrats muddling through doomed reconstruction projects. If all wars ultimately find their own Homer, thi...