“The Yellow Birds is a debut novel about a soldier coming of age and about the psychological aftermath of war. 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 Murphy’s mom to bring him safely home, the two have been dropped into a war neither is prepared for. The nonlinear, fractured narrative, which jumps around in time and location, mirrors the chaos and brutality of war.
The novel was a finalist for The National Book Award and was this week named one of this year’s top five fiction titles by the New York Times. One NYT review called the book ‘a first novel as compact and powerful as a footlocker full of ammo.’ Another described it as a book ‘that stands with Tim O’Brien’s enduring Vietnam book, The Things They Carried, as a classic of contemporary war fiction.’ . . . The Yellow Birds is a thoughtful, powerful, lyrical war story . . .”—Broadway Books, Portland. Read more and buy The Yellow Birds, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, Fobbit and Matterhorn from Broadway Books.
