The Forever War: Dispatches from the War on Terror - Hardcover

Filkins Dexter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1847920152 ISBN 13: 9781847920157

Publisher: The Bodley Head, 2008

Synopsis

From the front lines of the battle against Islamic fundamentalism, a searing, unforgettable book that captures the human essence of the greatest conflict of our time.

Through the eyes of Dexter Filkins, the prizewinning New York Times correspondent whose work was hailed by David Halberstam as “reporting of the highest quality imaginable,” we witness the remarkable chain of events that began with the rise of the Taliban in the 1990s, continued with the attacks of 9/11, and moved on to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Filkins’s narrative moves across a vast and various landscape of amazing characters and astonishing scenes: deserts, mountains, and streets of carnage; a public amputation performed by Taliban; children frolicking in minefields; skies streaked white by the contrails of B-52s; a night’s sleep in the rubble of Ground Zero.

We embark on a foot patrol through the shadowy streets of Ramadi, venture into a torture chamber run by Saddam Hussein. We go into the homes of suicide bombers and into street-to-street fighting with a battalion of marines. We meet Iraqi insurgents, an American captain who loses a quarter of his men in eight days, and a young soldier from Georgia on a rooftop at midnight reminiscing about his girlfriend back home. A car bomb explodes, bullets fly, and a mother cradles her blinded son.

Like no other book, The Forever War allows us a visceral understanding of today’s battlefields and of the experiences of the people on the ground, warriors and innocents alike. It is a brilliant, fearless work, not just about America’s wars after 9/11, but ultimately about the nature of war itself.

About this title

About the Author

Dexter Filkins has been foreign correspondent in Afghanistan and Iraq for the New York Times since 2000. He was a member of the Iraq bureau from 2003 to 2006, a Nieman fellow at Harvard in 2006, and is currently a fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Kennedy School of Government. A Pulitzer Prize finalist for his work from Afghanistan in 2002, he has received numerous awards, including the George Polk awards for his coverage of the assault of Falluja in 2004, and an Overseas Press Club award.

Review

"Visceral, evocative and impassioned, reminiscent of the best journalism from a previous American overseas quagmire: Vietnam. It's standard practice in cases such as this to rank the book in question against Michael Herr's classic, Dispatches, and for once the comparison holds up" * GQ * "Filkins's compassionate and unvarnished book is a vitally important one" * Daily Telegraph * "The scope of his vision, the characters he encounters ... and the events he witnesses give this the feeling of The Wire for real and gone global" * Arena * "As broad, vivid and unbiased a portrait of Iraq as has yet been written ... a fine, compelling, brilliant book" * Mail on Sunday * "Outstanding... Written in taut, pared-down prose, his book roams across a desolate urban battlefield where innocent civilians are dying like flies" * Daily Mail *

Edition details

• Publisher: The Bodley Head
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1847920152
• ISBN 13: 9781847920157
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 384