Spoils (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780316316163)

It is April 2003. American forces have taken Baghdad and are now charged with winning hearts and minds. But this vital tipping point is barely recognized for what it is, as a series of miscalculations and blunders fuels an already-simmering insurgency intent on making Iraq the next graveyard of empires.

In dazzling and propulsive prose, Brian Van Reet explores the lives on both sides of the battle lines: Cassandra, a nineteen-year-old gunner on an American Humvee who is captured during a deadly firefight and awakens in a prison cell; Abu Al-Hool, a lifelong mujahedeen beset by a simmering crisis of conscience as he struggles against enemies from without and within, including the new wave of far more radicalized jihadists; and Specialist Sleed, a tank crewman who goes along with a "victimless" crime, the consequences of which are more awful than any he could have imagined.

Depicting a war spinning rapidly out of control, destined to become a modern classic, Spoils is an unsparing and morally complex novel that chronicles the achingly human cost of combat.

"The finest Iraq War novel yet written by an American"-Wall Street Journal, 10 Best Novels of the Year

"An electrifying debut" (The Economist) that maps the blurred lines between good and evil, soldier and civilian, victor and vanquished.

Author: Brian Van Reet
ISBN-10: 0316316164
ISBN-13: 9780316316163
Publisher: Lee Boudreaux Books
Language: English
Published: 04/18/2017
Pages: 304
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.10lbs
Size: 9.40h x 6.30w x 1.00d

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 11/01/2016 pg. 55
Publishers Weekly 02/06/2017
Booklist 02/15/2017 pg. 30
Kirkus Reviews 02/15/2017 pg. 28
Library Journal 11/01/2016
Library Journal 04/15/2017 pg. 80
Shelf Awareness 05/05/2017
School Library Journal 09/01/2017