A Line in the Sand

Description

A powerful and timely literary thriller by the Guardian Award-winning author of The Yellow Birds, a sinuous, edge-of-the-seat tale of treachery, the tentacles of war, and conscience. One early morning on a beach in Virginia, a dead body is discovered by a man taking his daily swim - Arman Bajalan, formerly an interpreter in Iraq. After surviving an assassination attempt that killed his wife and child, Arman has been given lonely sanctuary in the US. Now, sure that the murder is connected with his past, he knows he's still not safe. Seasoned detective Catherine Wheel and her fresh-off-the beat partner have little to go on beyond a bus ticket in the man's pocket. It is to lead them to Sally Ewell, a local journalist as grief-stricken as Arman by the Iraq war, who is investigating a nefarious corporation: one on the cusp of landing a multi-billion-dollar government defence contract. As victims mount around Arman, taking the team down wrong turns and towards startling evidence, they find themselves in a race, committed to unravelling the truth and keeping Arman alive - even if it costs them everything.

Kevin Powers' first novel, The Yellow Birds, won the Guardian First Book Award, the PEN/Hemingway Award, and was a National Book Award Finalist. His poetry collection, Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting, was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize and Forward Prize. His second novel, A Shout in the Ruins, was published in 2018. Born and raised in Richmond, Virginia, he graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University and holds an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin, where he was a Michener Fellow in Poetry. He served in the US Army in 2004 and 2005 in Mosul and Tal Afar, Iraq.

A riveting powerhouse of a book, A Line in the Sand pits two small town cops - and a mysterious Iraqi interpreter whose secrets have already gotten a lot of people killed - against corruption and violence at the highest levels of government. A spellbinding and totally original thriller; Kevin Powers has reinvented himself as novelist yet again. -- Philipp Meyer Sure to rank among the year's best thrillers, A Line in the Sand is a tense, twisting, and thoughtful story of the intersection between grief and greed - and the human lives crushed in the middle. Kevin Powers writes with uncommon grace, delivering the rare novel that is both propulsive and contemplative, calling to mind writers as varied as Tim O'Brien and Michael Connelly. -- Michael Koryta Praise for The Yellow Birds Extraordinary . . . beautifully accomplished. The mark of an artist of the first order . . . a must-read book. -- John Burnside * Guardian * A masterpiece . . . a classic. -- Books of the Year * The Times * A stunning achievement - visceral poignant. * Sunday Times * Remarkable for its intensity of both feeling and expression. In this book about death, every line is a defiant assertion of the power of beauty to revivify -- Hilary Mantel * Guardian * A wonderful, powerful novel that moves and terrifies. * Independent on Sunday * An extraordinary novel . . . remarkable . . . stands with Tim O'Brien's enduring Vietnam book, The Things They Carried, as a classic of contemporary war fiction . . . brilliantly observed and deeply affecting. * New York Times * An important novel by a formidable talent * Daily Mail * Intense, painful, excellent. * Spectator * Powers has written a compassionate, poetic evocation of war and its legacy which has already been hailed as a classic of its genre -- Books of the Year * Sunday Express * Enormously powerful . . . Powers' writing is also attentive to nature and landscape, and he manages to entertain contradictory notions of beauty and horror. Wasn't that Fitzgerald's definition of genius? * Financial TImes * In the great tradition of Hemingway and Tim O'Brien . . . exquisitely written -- Edna O'Brien * Guardian * Harrowing, inexplicably beautiful, and utterly, urgently necessary * Ann Patchett * Written with an intensity which is deeply compelling * Colm Toibin * This is a novel I've been waiting for. The Yellow Birds is born from experience and rendered with compassion and intelligence. All of us owe Kevin Powers our heartfelt gratitude. * Alice Sebold * One of those books that knocks your perceptions into new alignment permanently. * Barbara Kingsolver * The Yellow Birds is the All Quiet on the Western Front of America's Arab Wars * Tom Wolfe *