Redeployment

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novel
title We shot dogs too
Original title Redeployment
transcription Hannes Meyer
country United StatesUnited States United States
author Phil Klay
publishing company Suhrkamp Verlag
First publication 2014

Redeployment ( [ˌri: dɪˈplɔɪmənt ], German  "Troop Relocation" ) is a collection of short stories by the American author Phil Klay about the Iraq war from 2014. When it was first published, the author won the National Book Award for 2014 in the fiction and category 2015 the WY Boyd Literary Award for Excellence in Military Fiction . The title of the German version translated by Hannes Meyer is Wir shot also dogs .

background

The book includes 12 short stories that chronicle the experiences of soldiers and veterans who served in the Iraq war, particularly Operation Iraqi Freedom from 2003 to 2010. Klay served in the United States Marine Corps from 2005 to 2009 and was from January 2007 to February Stationed in the embattled Iraqi province of al-Anbar in 2008 .

Klay said that before and during his deployment in Iraq he had no clear idea that he would write about the war. But when he announced his intention to join the military after graduation, his teacher and mentor at Dartmouth College , American poet Tom Sleigh, made sure “that I read Tolstoy , Hemingway , Isaac Babel and David Jones before I was called up . He thought it was important to study what the great thinkers had to say about war. "

Klay wrote the book for four years. The cover story first appeared in the literary magazine Granta and was reissued in Fire and Forget: Short Stories from the Long War , a selection of war stories. According to the author, the writing process required several years of careful research.

Klay described his assignment as a press and information officer in Iraq as a “moderate experience” as he did not experience the war directly, but only “secondhand”. To illustrate the war, Klay created several literary characters , each with different experiences and perspectives. Avoiding clichés and creating “prototypes” was, according to Klay, “something I took very seriously. I did extensive research, spoke to many Marines, and spent a lot of time pondering the subject. I did this creative work of reworking the stories over and over until I had something that felt emotionally real, which isn't necessarily what everyone who went through these experiences should like. "

To do this, he needed several votes because “... each person only has a small piece of the war, and these pieces are largely shaped not only by the when and where they were in Iraq, but also by the job they had to do. Instead of writing a unified novel about the experiences of the war, I wanted twelve different voices - voices approaching the same subjects but from different perspectives. I don't think all of my storytellers get along. I don't think they all agree on what war means either. And part of my intent was to leave room for the reader to come in and critically examine the claims of the narrators ... So, for me, it's just fascinating to get into very different minds. What was the war like for an undertaker? As for a chaplain ? For an artilleryman who never saw the enemy corpses he had killed? "

The author had some models in mind of what he did not want: "In recent years, a number of books have appeared with almost bizarre misrepresentations of the military by authors who wanted to report on Iraq but clearly did not want to do the hard work. To learn enough about the subject to tell something valuable. ”Klay added a list of literature he had read that helped him write it.

He stated that "... before I wrote about a Foreign Service officer , I read the memoirs of someone who served in Iraq, a mediocre book on a career in the diplomatic service, some reports from the" Iraqi Reconstruction Inspectorate, "and so on. I also read a Czech novel about World War I that seemed appropriate to me to find the right tone of voice, and I spoke to civil affairs soldiers and foreign service officers and read a lot of publications. Not everything I read was about war. Bernano's " Diary of a Country Pastor, " Edward P. Jones "The Known World," and Nathan Englander's short stories, for example, were all very helpful in different places for different stories. "

content

The 12 episodes in redeployment are set in Iraq and the USA, told from a first-person perspective and arranged in the following order:

  1. Redeployment ( German  troop deployment )
  2. FRAGO
  3. After Action Report ( German  mission report )
  4. Bodies ( German  corpses )
  5. OIF
  6. Money as a Weapons System ( German  money as a weapon system )
  7. In Vietnam They Had Whores ( German  In Vietnam they had hookers )
  8. Prayer in the Furnace ( German  prayer in the furnace )
  9. Psychological Operations ( German  Psychological Warfare )
  10. War Stories ( German  war stories )
  11. Unless It's a Sucking Chest Wound ( German  except for a lung wound )
  12. Ten Kliks South ( German  Ten Kliks South )

Reviews

On March 6, 2014, redeployment was published in the United States. Dexter Filkins wrote in the American daily The New York Times :

"It's the best thing written so far on what the war did to people's souls."

"It is the best that has been written so far about what the war did to human souls."

The New York Times rated the novel as one of the Top 10 Books of 2014.

Edward Docx wrote in The Guardian newspaper :

“It is definitely in the combined effect of the stories that Redeployment garners its power and earns the comparisons to Tim O'Brien's writing on Vietnam that it has been getting in America. Indeed, Klay's gifts become more apparent with each new narrator and circumstance: his reach, his tonal control, his observational sophistication, the sheer emotional torque of his narratives. By the end, he had convincingly inhabited more than a dozen different voices and I felt I had learned more about Iraq than in any documentary or factual account. "

“It is definitely in the combination of the individual stories that redeployment achieves its powerful effect and deserves the comparison with the Vietnam stories by Tim O'Brien . However, Klay's talents become more evident with each new narrator and situation: his scope, his tone regulation, his powers of observation, the unadulterated emotional moments of his stories. In the end, he believably created more than a dozen different voices, and I felt that I had learned more about Iraq than from any documentary or factual report. "

"Across a dozen stories told in first-person, Redeployment is at its heart a meditation on war - and the responsibility that everyone, especially the average citizen, bears for it."

"Beyond the dozen stories told from the first-person perspective, redeployment is at its core a meditation on war - and the responsibility that everyone, especially the average citizen, has to bear for it."

- National Public Radio

“Klay's bitter joke and ruthless realism color the gradually fading images of the Iraq war. In pointed condensation, he succeeds in illustrating the madness of the reconstruction. "

- Thomas Andre : The mirror

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Austria Press Agency : War veteran wins US book prize with book about Iraq and Afghanistan. In: Courier . November 20, 2014, accessed November 27, 2014 .
  2. ↑ Phil Klay: Ten Kliks South. In: Guernica / A Magazine of Art & Politics. November 19, 2013, accessed November 26, 2014 .
  3. ↑ Keith J. Kelly: Phil Klay wins Nation. In: New York Post . November 20, 2014, accessed November 26, 2014 .
  4. ^ Kate Kellaway: I had a desire to serve my country and I'm a physical guy. In: The Observer . March 16, 2014, accessed November 26, 2014 .
  5. ↑ Jeffrey Brown: Writer Phil Klay returns to war and the strangeness of coming home for redeployment . In: Public Broadcasting Service Newshour. November 24, 2014, accessed November 29, 2014 .
  6. ↑ Kevin Nguyen: The Art of War - Redeployment by Phil Klay. In: Omnivoracious. March 28, 2014, accessed November 29, 2014 .
  7. ↑ Public Affairs Officer
  8. ↑ Reminder From A Marine: Civilians And Veterans Share Ownership Of War. In: National Public Radio . March 6, 2014, accessed December 4, 2016 .
  9. ↑ Alexander J. Kane: An Interview With Phil Klay. In: The Dartmouth Review. May 17, 2014, accessed November 26, 2014 .
  10. ↑ a b Rebecca Rubenstein: Interview with Phil Klay, 2014 National Book Award Finalist, Fiction. In: National Book Foundation. Retrieved November 26, 2014 .
  11. ↑ Foreign Service Officer (FSO)
  12. ↑ Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR)
  13. ^ Civil Affairs soldiers
  14. ↑ Fragmentary Order (FRAGO)
  15. ↑ Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF)
  16. ^ Dexter Filkins: The Long Road Home. In: The New York Times . March 6, 2014, accessed November 26, 2014 .
  17. ^ Anthony Doerr: The 10 Best Books of 2014. In: The New York Times . December 4, 2014, accessed December 26, 2014 .
  18. ↑ Edward Docx: Redeployment by Phil Klay review - 'Incendiary stories of war'. In: The Guardian . March 26, 2014, accessed November 27, 2014 .
  19. ^ Redeployment, Age Of Ambition Win National Book Awards. In: National Public Radio . November 19, 2014, accessed December 2, 2014 .
  20. ↑ Thomas Andre: They promised freedom and brought death. In: Der Spiegel . November 7, 2014, accessed November 26, 2014 .