THE WATCH book !!

HERE ARE THE VOICES ON THE JACKET COVER OF THIS UP-FRONT BOOK ON THE REALITIES OF THE USA WAR IN AFGHANISTAN

　

"THE WATCH" book

by Joydeep Roy-bhattacharya

　

"Merciless and beautiful both, like the Central Asian outpost carved out of sand and war in which it is set, The Watch is a meticulous, gut-wrenching analysis of how we perpetuate violence. It is a reminder that we all - participants and onlookers alike - are complicit in the barbarities of war. It is our responsibility as writers to speak of the cruelty that each of us is capable of. Cruelty that in the far-flung desert reaches of the empire, away from public scrutiny, seems to multiply with the wind's breath, like loess grains. Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya fulfills his responsibility superbly." - ANNA BADKHEN, author of "Peace Meals and Waiting for the Taliban"

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"It is common to speak of certain wars as 'tragedies,' with the implication that as terrible as such wars are, no one is to be blamed for them. This astonishing novel reclaims tragedy's primal roots and locates them in America's occupation of Afghanistan. The Watch is a work of beauty and terror, exacting in its realism, breathtaking in the range of its sympathy, devastating in its judgment." - PETER TRACHTENBERG, author of "The Book of Calamities" and "7 Tattoos"

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"I've had a hard time putting The Watch down since first cracking it ... It's remarkable for its grasp of the soldier culture, pop culture, military idiom, not to mention the complexity of the Afghan contemporary and historical reality (which are more or less one and the same)." - LINDEN MacINTYRE, Scotiahank Giller Prize-winning author of "The Bishop's Man" and "Why Men Lie"

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"The Watch is a powerful tale, courageous both in concept and creation: an ancient tale made modern, passed through different narrators in extraordinary shape - shifting prose that makes this not just an important novel but a remarkable read" -

AMINATTA FORNA, author of Orange Prize finalist "The Memory of Love"

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"Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya's lyrical and poignant evocation of war is a potent reminder of the murderous futility of our imperial adventures in the Middle East. He captures the raw brutality of industrial warfare, along with its trauma, senselessness, random death, and stupidity. His characters, including the soldiers who prosecute the war and the innocents whose lives are maimed and destroyed by it, are consumed alike in the vast orgy of death that sweeps across war zones to extinguish all that is human tenderness, compassion, understanding, and finally love. He forces us to face the evil we do to others and to ourselves." - CHRIS NEDGES, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and authorof NBCC finalist "War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning"

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"A poignant and important book about one of the defining events of the start of the twenty-first century; it is devastatingly eloquent and unequivocal the fact that there is no glory or beauty in war." - FATIMA BHUTTO, author of "Songs of Blood" and "Sword: A Daughter's Memoir"

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"An important book for our times, in which one woman's determination and refusal to consent sets an example of courage and honesty." - GILES FODEN, author of "The Last King of Scotland"

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"A masterpiece of the art of fiction." - JONATHAN SHAY, MD, PhD, author of "Achilles in Vietnam"and "Odysseus in America"

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Following a desperate night-long battle, a group of beleaguered soldiers in an isolated base in Kandahar are faced with a lone woman demanding the return of her brother's body. Is she a spy, a black widow, a lunatic? Or is she what she claims to be: a grieving young sister intent on burying her brother according to local rites? Single-minded in her mission, she refuses to move from her spot on the field in full view of every soldier in the stark outpost. Her presence quickly proves dangerous as the camp's tense, claustrophobic atmosphere comes to a boil when the men begin arguing about what to do next.

Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya's heartbreaking and haunting novel takes a timeless tragedy and hurls it into present-day Afghanistan. Taking his cues from the Antigone myth, Roy-Bhattacharya brilliantly re-creates the chaos, intensity, and immediacy of battle, and conveys the inevitable repercussions felt by the soldiers and their families, and especially one sister. The result is a gripping tour through the reality of this very contemporary conflict, and our most powerful expression to date of the nature and futility of war.

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JOYDEEP ROY-BHATTACHARYA was born in Jamshedpur, India, and educated in politics and philosophy at Calcutta University and the University of Pennsylvania. His previous two novels, The Gabriel Club and The Storyteller of Marrakesh, have been published in eleven languages in sixteen countries. He lives in New York.

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IF  YOU  WANT  TO  KNOW  HOW  IT  OFTEN  IS  OVER  IN  AFGHANISTAN  DURING  THIS  WAR,  THEN  YOU  NEED  TO  READ  THIS  BOOK.  YOU'LL  NEED  TO  PASS  OVER  ALL  THE  "f"  WORDS  AND  SOME  PROFANITY.  THE  AUTHOR  HAD  THE  FULL  CO-OPERATION  OF  MANY  USA  ARMY  OFFICERS  OVER  THERE,  AND  CAPTAIN  RICHARD  FITZGERALD  SULLIVAN  OF  THE  U.S. ARMY,  AS  WELL  AS  MASTER  SERGEANT  JEFF  FENLASON  OF  THE  101ST  AIRBORNE .
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