Story Description:
Knopf Canada|June
5, 2012|Hardcover|ISBN:
978-0-307-40223-3
In this
powerful novel set in contemporary Kandahar, an Afghan woman approaches an
American military base to demand the return of her brother’s body.
At a stark
outpost in the Kandahar mountain range, a team of American soldiers watches a
young Afghan woman approach. She has
come to beg for the return of her brother’s body. The camp’s tense, claustrophobic atmosphere
comes to a boil as the men argue about what to do next. Taking its cue from the Antigone myth, this
significant, eloquent novel re-creates the chaos, intensity, and immediacy of
war, and conveys the inevitable repercussions felt by the soldiers and their
families – especially one sister.
My
Review:
A woman
who has lost both of her legs in an air attack on her village wheels herself on
a little cart many, many miles to an American Army base in Kandahar. She stops outside and begins to communicate
with the soldiers inside by yelling back and forth. She tells them that she has come to claim the
body of her brother so she can give him a proper burial that she feels he so
rightly deserves. The soldiers on the
army base don’t trust her and think she may be harbouring a bomb in her small
cart. At night, under cover of darkness,
they turn on spot lights to keep an eye on her.
Is retrieving her brother’s body the real reason she has come?
The story
weaves in other stories of the soldiers on the base with a realistic depiction
of the language and behaviour of the soldiers.
All of the soldiers are trying to decide what this woman’s real intent
is.
The Watch gives
us non-military folk first-hand experience about what war zones are really
like. I now have a better understanding why
a lot of these soldiers return home changed people. Overall, this was an excellent and
eye-opening read.
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