Redeployment

There is a refreshing versatility to the stories in this collection, which touch upon everything from soldiers on the front lines in Iraq, readjustment to the American home front, and a civilian foreign service officer getting stymied at every attempt at humanitarian aid. There is humor, irony, and gutting realism on every page, and the many perspectives offer the insights you hope for in a National Book Award-winning piece of fiction. 

I chose Redeployment because it’s a quintessential collection of stories told through a contemporary lens about the monotony, and so often the absurdity, of soldiering in general, and combat oftentimes in particular, and the struggle soldiers have when they return to civilian life, which is difficult to say the least. This collection highlights many of life’s, or more particularly, war’s questions of purpose that so often reverberate in a soldier’s psyche long after they return home.