Brian Van Reet

A brilliantly written account of kidnap and conquest in the early years of the Iraq war.

Clear, authentic and beautifully written, Spoils is a book about war for people who don’t like books about war. Van Reet gives us a thriller that is not a thriller, but a grave and fierce description of the moral battlefield behind the headlines from Iraq.

Brian Van Reet’s assured debut novel begins with one of the best opening chapters I’ve read... bear[s] eye-widening witness to valour, horror, violence, cruelty and absurdity... not only rewarding but necessary.

An instant addition to the canon of must-read war novels.

Uncompromisingly depicts the terror and pity of war.

This is a raw study in the ruin of men. It's unapologetic and confessional, showing the flaws in humanity just below the skin.

Original, deftly plotted and incisively intelligent.

A timely novel with striking relevance.

Brian Van Reet's debut works equally well as a geopolitical action-thriller and a literary novel… Beautifully written... Van Reet captures the tactile sensations of combat - the smells, the sounds, the physical discomfort and mental strain - so sharply… An excellent novel that seeks deeper truths, even as its plot kicks like the recoil of an assault rifle.

Slaughterhouse Five, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Catch 22 ... there’s now a new novel to sit alongside these war fiction goliaths. Yes that’s hyperbolic, but we’re ready to stand by it. It’s that good.

Stunning… Unsurprisingly, it has the ring of absolute authenticity, and Van Reet clearly articulates the violence mechanics of modern warfare… A human story, a psychological drama… A powerful and compelling narrative... As the search for the lost soldier intensifies.

Every page of his debut feels steeped in bitter, lived experience. And, as in the best reportage, it’s the little details that stand out – the bubblegum shipped 7000 miles to the front line, for instance, or the pitch black of a bunker beneath the glory of a desert sky.

Spoils is a unique and superbly crafted novel that addresses the reality of war in a sensitive, lyrical and intelligent manner.

Van Reet's lean prose accommodates a laconic style suggesting military reports and detail-rich context fed by a keen eye and memory. He embeds the reader with the unwashed troops in a cramped Humvee, in a dark cell where only screams penetrate, and in the mind of a Muslim fighter with two decades of campaigning, a dead son, a lost wife, scant wins, and more doubts than faith can ease. A fine piece of writing that should stand in the front ranks of recent war novels.

I read this with awe. Spoils is a harrowing and incredibly powerful debut which shows war in all its complexity and viciousness and which attempts to humanise it through extraordinary and conflicted characters. The female soldier Cassandra Wigheard is superbly drawn and her relationship with the young Jihadist will stay with me for a long time.

Brian Van Reet's beautiful, intense, and at times disturbing novel Spoils traces the motivations and desires of combatants on both sides of the Iraq War, showing us what happens when increasing violence and chaos start to warp the choices they're able to make.

Moving immediately into the pantheon of first-rate war novels, Spoils reads like a nightmare within a tragedy, a story that is both touchingly classic and brutally modern, This is a definitive record of the war that marked the end of the American Empire. One of the best novels of our time in the Middle East.

With Spoils Brian Van Reet has given readers an intensely moving novel. That it is also a nearly comprehensive examination of our modern wars is a remarkable demonstration of both the power and relevance of fiction.

In recent years there have been a number of very good novels by veterans of the Global War on Terror. None is as ambitious, inclusive or powerful as Brian Van Reet's Spoils; none has this novel's range or uncanny ability to transport the reader to the battlefield and those rarely explored margins at the battlefield's ragged edge. Spoils is a fantastic debut.

Vivid and fierce, Spoils is an eloquent exploration of humanity. Depicting a world with no obvious villains or heroes, this novel is as important as it is timely. By exploring the nuances of motivation, loyalty, and sacrifice, Van Reet exposes the connections that bind us across even the greatest divides.

The brilliance of Brian Van Reet’s Spoils lies not only in the sheer forward-motion velocity of its plotting, but in the psychological terrain it explores: what a generation of young women and men went looking for in Iraq, what they found, and why that discovery matters so profoundly for the rest of us.

In Spoils, Van Reet has imbued his subject with subtlety — something that it is so often stripped of, both by combatants and the media. One rarely sees a war novel by a soldier with such convincing writing on both sides of the trenches.

This is a great novel… Brian Van Reet [is] a special talent.

An honest glimpse into the action, emotion and futility of war.

The action is realistic and relentless, the writing lean and muscular, the tale harrowing, and the horrors seemingly inevitable but no less powerful for that.

In dazzling and propulsive prose, Brian Van Reet explores the lives on both sides of the battle lines… Depicting a war spinning rapidly out of control, destined to become a modern classic, Spoils is an unsparing and morally complex novel that chronicles the achingly human cost of combat.

Spoils reeks of the fog and futility of war… It has its own blue-collar beauty as it tells its tale from three perspectives: a gay, female US soldier, an Egyptian jihadist and a US tank commander.

Brian Van Reet has firsthand combat experience to draw upon for this powerful piece of fiction, rendering it an intensely humane story, giving credible authenticity to the plot, and scenes presented to the reader… Enlightening, thought provoking and hauntingly mesmerising, I cannot recommend Spoils highly enough to anyone interested in novels about war and conflict.

Every page brims with brutal authenticity.

Spoils bears eye-widening witness to valour, horror, violence, cruelty and absurdity.

*WINNER OF THE WRITERS' LEAGUE OF TEXAS FICTION AWARD 2017* 
 
It is the spring of 2003 and coalition forces are advancing on Iraq. Images of a giant statue of Saddam Hussein crashing to the ground in Baghdad are being beamed to news channels around the world. Nineteen-year-old Specialist Cassandra Wigheard, on her first deployment since joining the US army two years earlier, is primed for war. 
 
For Abu al-Hool, a jihadist since the days of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, war is wearing thin. Two decades of fighting have left him questioning his commitment to the struggle. When Cassandra is taken prisoner by al-Hool’s mujahideen brotherhood, both fighters will find their loyalties tested to the very limits.

Brian Van Reet

Praise for Spoils

A brilliantly written account of kidnap and conquest in the early years of the Iraq war.

**Clear, authentic and beautifully written, Spoils is a book about war for people who don’t like books about war. Van Reet gives us a thriller that is not a thriller, but a grave and fierce descriptio ...**

Blisteringly good.

A brilliantly written account of kidnap and conquest in the early years of the Iraq war.

**Clear, authentic and beautifully written, Spoils is a book about war for people who don’t like books about war. Van Reet gives us a thriller that is not a thriller, but a grave and fierce descriptio ...**

Blisteringly good.

A brilliantly written account of kidnap and conquest in the early years of the Iraq war.

**Clear, authentic and beautifully written, Spoils is a book about war for people who don’t like books about war. Van Reet gives us a thriller that is not a thriller, but a grave and fierce descriptio ...**

Blisteringly good.

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