Spoils

Author(s): Brian Van Reet

Fiction

It is the spring of 2003 and coalition forces are advancing on Iraq. Images of a giant statue of Saddam Hussein crashing to the ground in Baghdad are being beamed to news channels around the world. Nineteen-year-old Specialist Cassandra Wigheard, on her first deployment since joining the US army two years earlier, is primed for war. For Abu al-Hool, a jihadist since the days of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, war is wearing thin. Two decades of fighting - and the new wave of super-radicalised fighters joining the ranks in the wake of the September 11 attacks - have left him questioning his commitment to the struggle. When Cassandra is taken prisoner by al-Hool's mujahideen brotherhood, both fighters will find their loyalties tested to the very limits. This fast-paced, hard-hitting account of eight weeks in the lives of a soldier and her captor forces us to reconsider the simplistic narratives of war spun by those in power. With its privileged insight into the reality of armed combat, Spoils shines a light on the uncertainty, fear and idealism that characterised the early days of one of the most important conflicts of our time.

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"Spoils is a unique and superbly crafted novel that addresses the reality of war in a sensitive, lyrical and intelligent manner." -- Louise Rhind-Tutt i "Clear, authentic and beautifully written, Spoils is a book about war for people who don't like books about war. Van Reet gives us a thriller that is not a thriller, but a grave and fierce description of the moral battlefield behind the headlines from Iraq." -- Anne Enright "I read this with awe. Spoils is a harrowing and incredibly powerful debut which shows war in all its complexity and viciousness and which attempts to humanise it through extraordinary and conflicted characters. The female soldier Cassandra Wigheard is superbly drawn and her relationship with the young Jihadist will stay with me for a long time." -- Kate Atkinson "Brian Van Reet's beautiful, intense, and at times disturbing novel Spoils traces the motivations and desires of combatants on both sides of the Iraq War, showing us what happens when increasing violence and chaos start to warp the choices they're able to make." -- Phil Klay, author of Redeployment "Moving immediately into the pantheon of first-rate war novels, Spoils reads like a nightmare within a tragedy, a story that is both touchingly classic and brutally modern, This is a definitive record of the war that marked the end of the American Empire. One of the best novels of our time in the Middle East." -- Philipp Meyer, author of American Rust

General Fields

  • : 9781910702970
  • : Vintage Publishing
  • : Jonathan Cape Ltd
  • : 0.359
  • : April 2017
  • : 234mm X 153mm
  • : United Kingdom
  • : May 2017
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : 272
  • : 517
  • : Paperback
  • : Brian Van Reet