The Militia House
A Novel
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- ¥1,400
発行者による作品情報
Longlisted for the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize
Nominated for the 2023 Shirley Jackson Award
“An extraordinary novel about the quiet and not so quiet horrors of war.” —Roxane Gay
Stephen King meets Tim O’Brien in John Milas’s The Militia House, a spine-tingling and boldly original gothic horror novel.
It’s 2010, and the recently promoted Corporal Loyette and his unit are finishing up their deployment at a new base in Kajaki, Afghanistan. Their duties here are straightforward—loading and unloading cargo into and out of helicopters—and their days are a mix of boredom and dread. The Brits they’re replacing delight in telling them the history of the old barracks just off base, a Soviet-era militia house they claim is haunted, and Loyette and his men don’t need much convincing to make a clandestine trip outside the wire to explore it.
It’s a short, middle-of-the-day adventure, but the men experience a mounting agitation after their visit to the militia house. In the days that follow they try to forget about the strange, unsettling sights and sounds from the house, but things are increasingly . . . not right. Loyette becomes determined to ignore his and his marines’ growing unease, convinced that it’s just the strain of war playing tricks on them. But something about the militia house will not let them go.
Meticulously plotted and viscerally immediate in its telling, The Militia House is a gripping and brilliant exploration of the unceasing horrors of war that’s no more easily shaken than the militia house itself.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Horror debuts don't come much more impressive than this unsettling offering from Milas, who puts his experience as a U.S. Marine stationed in Afghanistan to good use. While setting a haunted house in the Afghan desert isn't intuitive, Milas's facility for capturing the mixed terror and boredom of war makes this a standout. It's 2010, and Cpl. Alex Loyette is in Helmand Province overseeing soldiers at a forward operating base that provides logistical support for transport helicopters. Near the base is an abandoned Soviet-era building known as the militia house, which, according to British soldiers who've been at the base the longest, was the site of a brutal massacre of Russian soldiers, who'd purportedly been skinned alive by mujahideen in the '80s. Loyette and his men can't resist the temptation to sneak a visit to the house, a brief foray that leads to some terrifying consequences, leaving all parties haunted. Milas is brilliant at making his lead's eerie experiences and surreal hallucinations vivid, scary, and psychologically nuanced. Fans of classic horror will welcome this outstanding new talent.
