Thursday, June 28, 2012

Where are the novels about the war in Iraq & Afghanistan?

     I ran across an article today that asks a very interesting question: Where are the novels about Iraq and Afghanistan?
     The war is nearly ten years old now. Book stores and Amazon are running over with memiors, but where are the novels? Where are the attemptes to annalyze, understand, and explain the experience instead of merely reporting it?
     If you search Amazon for novels about the Global War on Terror (GWOT), you might get some Vince Flynn-style action and adventure titles, but nothing like Tim O'brien's The Things They Carried or even Crane's The Red Badge of Courage. I'd say Ghosts of Babylon is somewhere in the middle. Is there a market for modern war novels? I guess we'll find out.
    Here's the link to the story:  http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/06/wheres-the-great-novel-about-the-war-on-terror/240233/
Is the lack of modern war novels due to a change in readers, publishers, authors, or all three?
What do you think?

No comments:

Post a Comment