Redeployment: National Book Award Winner

Written by:
Phil Klay
Narrated by:
Craig Klein

Unabridged Audiobook

Ratings
Book
7
Narrator
3
Release Date
March 2014
Duration
7 hours 46 minutes
Summary
Winner of the National Book Award for Fiction

'Redeployment is hilarious, biting, whipsawing and sad. It’s the best thing written so far on what the war did to people’s souls.” —Dexter Filkins, The New York Times Book Review

Selected as one of the best books of the year by The New York Times Book Review, Time, Newsweek, The Washington Post Book World, Amazon, and more

Phil Klay's Redeployment takes readers to the frontlines of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, asking us to understand what happened there, and what happened to the soldiers who returned.  Interwoven with themes of brutality and faith, guilt and fear, helplessness and survival, the characters in these stories struggle to make meaning out of chaos.

In 'Redeployment', a soldier who has had to shoot dogs because they were eating human corpses must learn what it is like to return to domestic life in suburbia, surrounded by people 'who have no idea where Fallujah is, where three members of your platoon died.'  In 'After Action Report', a Lance Corporal seeks expiation for a killing he didn't commit, in order that his best friend will be unburdened.  A Morturary Affairs Marine tells about his experiences collecting remains—of U.S. and Iraqi soldiers both.  A chaplain sees his understanding of Christianity, and his ability to provide solace through religion, tested by the actions of a ferocious Colonel.  And in the darkly comic 'Money as a Weapons System', a young Foreign Service Officer is given the absurd task of helping Iraqis improve their lives by teaching them to play baseball.  These stories reveal the intricate combination of monotony, bureaucracy, comradeship and violence that make up a soldier's daily life at war, and the isolation, remorse, and despair that can accompany a soldier's homecoming.

Redeployment has become a classic in the tradition of war writing.  Across nations and continents, Klay sets in devastating relief the two worlds a soldier inhabits: one of extremes and one of loss.  Written with a hard-eyed realism and stunning emotional depth, this work marks Phil Klay as one of the most talented new voices of his generation.
Reviews
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Aleh Nadolski

I like the way that the author writes. It read like someone's real story rather than fiction, especially when you know who is author. The narrator is amazing.

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Mary-Elisabeth Ruttenbur

Wouldn't listen to this again. Not very well written.

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Karin Morr

I was deeply upset with the language used in this novel. There were so many curse words used that it was very difficult for me to try to stay focused on the story, and I never did find it. Maybe because I am the daughter of an American solder, I never did quite understand my father. When he was sent to Vietnam, he returned home just a little bit differently each time. He was deployed three times. He and I never developed a "normal" father-daughter relationship. He served 20 years, and then retired. The true hero may have been my mother, who has stayed married to him for fifty three years. Good try, Phil Kay, but it could have been written a bit more tactfully. That's all.

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