Missionaries

Description

Neither Mason, a US Special Forces medic, nor Lisette, a foreign correspondent, has emerged from America's long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan unscathed. Yet, for them, war still exerts a terrible draw - the noble calling, the camaraderie, the life-and-death stakes. Where else in the world can such a person go? All roads lead to Colombia, where the US has partnered with the local government to stamp out a vicious civil war and keep the predatory narco gangs at bay. Mason is ready for the good war, and Lisette is more than ready to cover it. A novel of extraordinary suspense, Missionaries is an astonishment whose unsparing drama is infused with a rare wisdom about the human heart.

Phil Klay is a veteran of the US Marine Corps. He served in Iraq during the surge and subsequently received an MFA from Hunter College. His work has featured in the New York Times, Tin House and Granta. He is co-host of the Manifesto! podcast and is the author of Redeployment, which was a New York Times bestseller and won the National Book Award. Missionaries is his first novel. @PhilKlay | philklay.com

[A] sweeping, searing, wrenching and wise addition to the great literature of America's postwar imperialism * * Guardian, Book of the Day * * If Redeployment was about what happened when we ship wars abroad, then Missionaries is what happens when war comes roaring right back. Expansive, explosive, and epic -- MARLON JAMES Wrenching and insightful * * New Yorker * * Missionaries has a sweep and incisiveness to it I had almost forgotten novels were capable of. I haven't been so gripped by a book in years. It is immensely smart and far-seeing, and utterly unsparing. Extraordinary -- GARTH GREENWELL By means of a well-oiled plot, complex characters and adrenaline-fuelled action, Klay opens our eyes to the globalised nature of modern conflict * * The Times * * Missionaries is a courageous book: it doesn't shy away, as so much fiction does, from the real world . . . Is there such a thing as a "good war", like the one Mason seeks? Missionaries is skeptical at best; it does believe, however, in fiction's ability to illuminate these dark places. And so the novel goes on, undeterred, exploring and revealing whole human worlds that would remain inaccessible without it -- Juan Gabriel Vasquez * * New York Times Book Review * * This impressive debut shines a light on the globalisation of violence . . . Klay, himself a former US marine, has crafted a gripping novel that doubles as a prodigiously well-researched attack on the horrors of war and on America's covert counter-terrorism tactics. Stunning * * Mail on Sunday * * Missionaries is an urgent, detailed, compassionate and quietly furious novel about America and her Forever Wars. Intensely readable, exciting, funny and heartbreaking - it will change you -- A.L. KENNEDY Powerfully written . . . A page-turning saga of good guys taking out bad guys, bad guys being bad, and bad guys turned good guys struggling to do the right thing * * Independent * * Missionaries shook me to my core. Klay takes the reader into the heart of Colombian darkness; the abuses of power, the forgotten lives of girls and women and how quickly human dignity - and conscience - get eroded in extreme times. This is audacious, heartbreaking, epic fiction. It touched me greatly -- MARY COSTELLO