Horrors of the Iraq War, Apathy at Home

Phil Klay: 'I had a desire to serve my country and I'm a physical guy'

The US marine-turned-writer on the horrors of the Iraq war, his anger at apathy at home and the challenge of returning to civilian life

15 March 2014 - Phil Klay is a former US marine who served in Iraq and studied creative writing at Dartmouth. His first book, Redeployment, a collection of stories, each in a different voice, set both in Iraq and in the US after his characters have returned home, has been published in the US to huge acclaim. "Hilarious, biting, whipsawing and sad," said the New York Times. "It's the best thing written so far on what the war did to people's souls."

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Your stories are full of disquiet about the way civilians respond to stories of war.
There is a lot of frustration about civilian apathy. As marines, we sign up for a job that can be very dangerous, we entrust ourselves to the US body politic in the hope they will hold leaders responsible. We fight in the trust that citizens will not keep an incompetent secretary of defence in charge. When you come back and find apathy, it is more than frustrating. Something deeply important you have been involved in is not being understood.

Are you sure it is apathy? Isn't it natural not to want to focus on war if you are lucky enough not to have to?
War is not a pleasant subject. And it is complicated – we'd like it to be simple. There is a tendency to think of vets as either badass heroes or passively traumatised, whereas it is often a complicated mix. You can be proud and feel conflicted by the sheer ugliness of what war is.

Your reviewers have pounced on a line where civilians are described as "gluttonous, fat, oversexed, overconsuming, materialist" and "too lazy" to see their faults. Did you intend to make readers self-critical?
It is important to undermine assumptions, though no one in my stories is supposed to be speaking absolute truth. read more>>>