War Porn

The fragmented images of tortured prisoners from Abu Ghraib and the U.S. military's tactic of "shock and awe" are what many remember from the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Scranton (Learning To Die in the Anthropocene; Fire and Forget) experienced these events firsthand during his 14-month deployment in Iraq with the U.S. Army. Here, in his debut novel, Scranton unflinchingly explores the political and moral stress of war inflicted on perpetrators, victims, and observers alike. Through the intertwining narratives of three characters—an American soldier serving in Baghdad, a math professor struggling to survive in occupied Iraq, and a vocal antiwar advocate at a barbecue in Utah—the author demonstrates how voyeurism functions as an anesthetic agent on both the spectator and the participant. Each character yearns to escape from and stop the brutality perceived in the world but finds the cyclical nature of violence inescapable.