Phil Klay Is The First Ever Iraq War Veteran To Win The National Book Award For Fiction
Klay produced a gripping collection of short stories on a wide range of topics, from modern combat, the boredom of deployment, to the homecoming and stressful transition to civilian life. For its part, "Redeployment" was previously described by The New Yorker as "the best literary work thus far written by a veteran of America's recent wars."
Starting with the very first page, the reader quickly learns that "Redeployment" is not a typical war memoir.
"The first sentence I wrote was 'we shot dogs,'" Klay told Business Insider in August. "I knew a Marine who had talked about the experience of shooting dogs. I'm a dog lover myself, so it seemed like something that crystallized the weirdness of some of the things people experience and try to make sense of, and that difference between the things that you do overseas and what constitutes normal life for everybody back home."
A graduate of Dartmouth College, Klay served in Iraq's Anbar Province from Jan. 2007 to Feb. 2008 as a Public Affairs Officer for the U.S. Marine Corps. When he left the service, he went to Hunter College and received a Masters in Fine Arts.
The New York Times has more:
In an emotional acceptance speech, Mr. Klay described returning from the war and being treated as if he were unstable, and being asked by children if he had killed anyone.
"I came back not knowing what to think," he said. "What do you do when you're trying to explain in words, to the father of a fallen Marine, exactly what that Marine meant to you?"
His book is very much worth reading. You can check out a longer review of it at Business Insider, or pick it up at Amazon.
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