War Porn
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
"One of the best and most disturbing war novels in years."
—The Wall Street Journal
“War porn,” n. Videos, images, and narratives featuring graphic violence, often brought back from combat zones, viewed voyeuristically or for emotional gratification. Such media are often presented and circulated without context, though they may be used as evidence of war crimes.
War porn is also, in Roy Scranton’s searing debut novel, a metaphor for the experience of war in the age of the War on Terror, the fracturing and fragmentation of perspective, time, and self that afflicts soldiers and civilians alike, the global networks and face-to-face moments that suture our fragmented lives together. In War Porn three lives fit inside one another like nesting dolls: a restless young woman at an end-of-summer barbecue in Utah; an American soldier in occupied Baghdad; and Qasim al-Zabadi, an Iraqi math professor, who faces the US invasion of his country with fear, denial, and perseverance. As War Porn cuts from America to Iraq and back again, as home and hell merge, we come to see America through the eyes of the occupied, even as we see Qasim become a prisoner of the occupation. Through the looking glass of War Porn, Scranton reveals the fragile humanity that connects Americans and Iraqis, torturers and the tortured, victors and their victims.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Scranton's provocative debut novel lucidly captures the fractured perspectives of war. Told in three recurring sections punctuated by fragmentary, poetic introductions, the lives of three characters unfold under the influence of the Iraq War which, at every turn, is mediated and distorted by the lens of mass media. The first section follows civilian Dahlia at a party somewhere in the American Southwest, where she meets Aaron, a veteran newly home from Iraq. Conflicting political ideologies clash as booze and drugs create a dangerous mix for the impassioned opinions. In the second section, Wilson weaves his armored vehicle through the streets of Baghdad while contemplating his role in the conflict. He performs the day-to-day grind of someone who only wears the uniform, cynically following orders sometimes rooted in prejudice against the Muslim civilians. In the third section, Qasim, a mathematics professor in Baghdad, tries to survive the brutality on both sides of the befuddling war while making sense of himself, his country, and what may become of both. Living with his uncle Mohammed and away from his wife, Lateefah, he struggles with the expectations of his family. Having enlisted in the U.S. Army from 2002 to 2006 and having been deployed to Iraq, Scranton writes with honesty and authority about a complicated clash of weapons, politics, and culture. His novel is an unflinching, and sometimes difficult, examination of humanity during wartime.
