The Farther Shore - Hardcover

Eck, Matthew

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1571310576 ISBN 13: 9781571310576

Publisher: Milkweed Editions, 2007

Synopsis

In coastal Africa, a small unit of U.S. Army soldiers is separated from its command and left for dead. Josh and his battle buddies are forced to keep moving to escape the marauding gangs that rule the area, and after a series of terrifying, violent encounters, only a few of them survive. In this haunting, adrenaline-filled war novel, both natives and invaders are almost inhuman, reflecting the horror and strangeness of postmodern military engagements.

About this title

From Booklist:

*Starred Review* Three American soldiers are stranded in a war-blasted desert city in Africa. The heat, the sand, the impenetrable darkness are all exacting a toll. The enemy is everyone and anyone, even your comrades. The mission is vague, preposterous. The people are starving, desperate, and violent, tyrannized by warlords and clan loyalty. Packs of emaciated dogs roam through smoking ruins. All is obscured by haze, dust, and fear. Josh, a good boy from Wichita, Kansas, struggles to stay rational, vigilant, honorable. Santiago, their lieutenant, tells him, "Stop thinking so much." Their situation goes from bad to worse to all-out nightmare as they barely escape the city and set out for the sea. Every word in Eck's first novel is as solid as a stone. Every moment of crisis feels authentic in its terror and tragedy; indeed, Eck served as a soldier in Somalia at age 18. Heir to Hemingway, and damn near as powerful as Cormac McCarthy in The Road (2006), Eck has created a contemporary version of The Red Badge of Courage in this tale of one young man's trial by fire in the pandemonium of war in an age of high-tech weaponry and low-grade morality. Seaman, Donna

From Publishers Weekly:

A unit of young American soldiers lost in an unnamed city in an unnamed desert nation struggle to maintain a tenuous grip on their lives in this haunting debut novel by Eck, a veteran of U.S. Army efforts in Somalia. Narrator Joshua Stantz recounts his wanderings with such quiet objectivity that the horrors he witnesses evoke winces and poetic details stand out in contrast: there are wounds that hiss and bubble, but there is also a girl's lone eyelash falling from the creases of a letter. Early in the book, Joshua is part of a group of six soldiers who, separated from their unit and under murky circumstances, kill two boys, but almost everything else about their circumstances remains unclear: where exactly are they and why? and who is the enemy? With these questions in the air, the formal rules of engagement become all but useless as the troops navigate a landscape rife with dangers—warring clans, armed thugs, the elements. Eck goes beyond the on-the-ground chaos of battle to capture the physical and psychological disorientation of modern war. (Oct.)
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About this edition

• Publisher: Milkweed Editions
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1571310576
• ISBN 13: 9781571310576
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 192