"The All Quiet on the Western Front of America''s Arab wars."
Tom Wolfe
"The Yellow Birds is harrowing, inexplicably beautiful, and
utterly, urgently necessary." Ann Patchett
当代战争文学经典之作,语言简洁优美如海明威,景物描绘之天才如麦卡锡
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, whether beauty shows itself in nature
or later in art. Graves, Owen and Sassoon would have recognised
this war and the stran
內容簡介:
二十一岁的巴特与十八岁的新兵莫菲,於美国出兵伊拉克前夕于军中相识,两人一见如故,巴特答应莫菲母亲,会平安带著她儿子归来,但二○○五年,只剩巴特独自一人退伍返国。莫菲在伊拉克战场上因饱受死亡威胁,精神崩溃逃出军营,巴特与士官长施大林发现他时,莫菲已遭不明人士虐杀,全身赤裸,不仅眼睛被挖出,耳朵、鼻子被割掉,生殖器也几乎被切断,两人在怕事的心态下将莫菲丢入河中佯装失踪,巴特事后假扮莫菲写了封信给莫菲之母。然而等到巴特退伍回国后,莫菲的尸体浮现在底格里斯河与幼发拉底河的汇流处……
A novel written by a veteran of the war in Iraq, The Yellow
Birds is the harrowing story of two young soldiers trying to stay
alive.
"The war tried to kill us in the spring." So begins this
powerful account of friendship and loss. In Al Tafar, Iraq,
twenty-one-year old Private Bartle and eighteen-year-old Private
Murphy cling to life as their platoon launches a bloody battle for
the city. Bound together since basic training when Bartle makes a
promise to bring Murphy safely home, the two have been dropped into
a war neither is prepared for.
In the endless days that follow, the two young soldiers do
everything to protect each other from the forces that press in on
every side: the insurgents, physical fatigue, and the mental stress
that comes from constant danger. As reality begins to blur into a
hazy nightmare, Murphy becomes increasingly unmoored from the world
around him and Bartle takes actions he could never have
imagined.
With profound emotional insight, especially into the effects
of a hidden war on mothers and families at home, The Yellow Birds
is a groundbreaking novel that is destined to become a classic.
WINNER OF THE GUARDIAN FIRST BOOK AWARD 2012 An unforgettable
depiction of the psychological impact of war, by a young Iraq
veteran and poet, THE YELLOW BIRDS is already being hailed as a
modern classic. Everywhere John looks, he sees Murph. He flinches
when cars drive past. His fingers clasp around the rifle he hasn''t
held for months. Wide-eyed strangers praise him as a hero, but he
can feel himself disappearing. Back home after a year in Iraq,
memories swarm around him: bodies burning in the crisp morning air.
Sunlight falling through branches; bullets kicking up dust; ripples
on a pond wavering like plucked strings. The promise he made, to a
young man''s mother, that her son would be brought home safely. With
THE YELLOW BIRDS, poet and veteran Kevin Powers has composed an
unforgettable account of friendship and loss. It vividly captures
the desperation and brutality of war, and its terrible
after-effects. But it is also a story of love, of great courage,
and of extraordinary human survival. Written with profound
emotional insight, especially into the effects of a hidden war on
families at home, THE YELLOW BIRDS is one of the most haunting,
true and powerful novels of our time. ''THE YELLOW BIRDS is the All
Quiet on the Western Front of America''s Arab Wars.'' Tom Wolfe,
author of The Bonfire of the Vanities ''Kevin Powers has conjured
a poetic and devastating account of war''s effect on the
individual.'' Damian Lewis, star of Homeland and Band of Brothers
''Inexplicably beautiful''. Ann Patchett, Orange Prize-winning
author of Bel Canto and State of Wonder
關於作者:
凯文·鲍尔斯出生、成长於美国维吉尼亚州里奇蒙,毕业於维吉尼亚联邦大学,德州大学奥斯汀分校艺术创作硕士,其诗作获米奇纳奖学金Michener
Fellow。
二○○四年至二○○五年曾至伊拉克战场服役,在摩苏尔与塔法尔担任机枪手。
Kevin Powers was born and raised in Richmond, Virginia,
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
Iraq, where he was deployed as a machine gunner in Mosul and Tal
Afar. His debut novel, THE YELLOW BIRDS won the Guardian First Book
Award 2012 and was a New York Times bestseller in its first week of
publication.www.kevincpowers.com