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Klay, Phil : Redeployment

The Penguin Press, New York City, NY, 2014

ISBN 1594204993

First Edition / First Printing. Fine in Fine Dust Jacket. 291 pages. The author's breakthrough debut collection of short stories. One of the most sensational literary debuts of our time. The First Hardcover Edition. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original only. The First Edition is now scarce. Presents Iraqi veteran Phil Klay's "Redeployment". His first book. Described by the New Yorker Magazine as "the best literary work thus far" on the Iraq War, it tells a different - and deeper - truth about the American involvement in Iraq than any journalistic account published on the subject. It is a direct descendant of one of our greatest literary traditions: The "war" novel and short story. Hemingway ("A Farewell To Arms"), Gore Vidal ("Williwaw"), Norman Mailer ("The Naked And The Dead"), Kurt Vonnegut ("Slaughterhouse-Five"), and Joseph Heller ("Catch-22") are just a few of the canonical authors and their debut titles about various "American" wars in our time, over which Vietnam looms largest. War fiction, particularly "Vietnam literature", is a genre unto itself; Iraq and Afghanistan are its contemporary successor-wars, whose human cost is the subject of literature because it can never be captured by the distanced, impersonal, "third-person" voice of journalism. Phil Klay's collection is surely most notable, and irresistible, for its "first-person" voice: Palpable, a living, breathing, aching voice. It was something that needed to be told by someone who experienced it firsthand, somehow survived, and has now written to tell the rest of us all about it. Almost all of the greatest war fiction is a first book (by a very young man, of very large promise and talent) that, once written, could never be repeated, a "stand-alone" achievement that may or may not be the harbinger of a great body of work. There are critics and readers who believe that Mailer, Vonnegut, and Heller never quite surpassed their war novels whereas "A Farewell To Arms" became the basis of Hemingway's Nobel-winning oeuvre and "Williwaw", an underrated Vidal work, was simply the signal arrival of a major writer. An unforgettable book about what our politicians routinely call "our men and women in uniform", never ever calling them what they are, "soldiers", thereby glossing over and inuring us to what they do (they are paid, deployed, and redeployed to die, "for us, our values, and our way of life"), it is dedicated to "My Mother and My Father, who had three sons join the military in a time of war". An absolute "must-have" title for Phil Klay collectors. This copy is very prominently, neatly, and beautifully signed and placed in black ink-pen on the title page by the author: "Phil Klay NYC". It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page. Klay launched the book in New York City. It also comes with a pristine copy of the First Softcover Edition/First Printing, also very prominently, neatly, and beautifully signed by the author. This title will become a contemporary classic. This is one of few such signed copies of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing still available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright, a pristine beauty. Please note: Copies available online have serious flaws, are subsequent printings, or are remainder-marked. This is surely an accessible and lovely alternative. A rare signed copy thus. Winner of the National Book Award in 2014 for "Redeployment". One of the most brilliant new voices of American literature. A fine collectible copy. (SEE ALSO ELLIOT ACKERMAN TITLES IN OUR CATALOG). ISBN 1594204993.

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