Redeployment
(Book)

Phil Klay's Redeployment takes readers to the front lines of the war in Iraq, asking us to understand what happened there and what happened to the soldiers who returned. Brutality and faith, guilt and fear, helplessness and survival--the characters in these stories struggle to make meaning 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. In "After Action Report," a lance corporal seeks expiation for a killing he didn't commit in order that his best friend be unburdened. 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.

National Book Awards | Winner | Fiction | 2014 - 2014 ; National Book Critics Circle Award | Winner | First Book | 2014 - 2014 ; PEN Literary Award | Finalist | Debut Fiction | 2015 - 2015 ; Chautauqua Prize | Winner | Literary Achievement | 2015 - 2015