First Stone

From the award-winning author of We, the Drowned comes a brutal, unflinching, and bestselling epic novel of a platoon of soldiers descending into the insanity of the war in Afghanistan.

Part of the NATO forces dispatched to fight the Taliban, the Third Platoon has arrived in desert hell. Among them: the commander whose negotiations outweigh scruples; a naive videographer planning to create a monument to the war on the web; a medic unprepared for what a roadside bomb can do to human flesh; the lone woman in the troop burying the trauma of childhood neglect to face horrors she thinks she can finally control; and Schrøder, the platoon leader. A former designer of computer games, he’s the natural choice for moving his players through the coming chaos.

But when the mission begins to exact an incalculable toll on the sanity and humanity of the Third Platoon, identifying the real enemy becomes dire. Following a devastating betrayal, they are driven by vengeance to a destiny more savagely violent than they were trained for.

An explicitly brutal portrait of battle told with the propulsion of a harrowing psychological thriller, The First Stone puts readers in the crosshairs between the madness of the imagination and the bestial realities of a conflict without end.

De la autorul premiat al cartii Noi, inecatul vine un roman epic brutal, neclintit si cel mai bine vandut al unui pluton de soldati care coboara in nebunia razboiului din Afganistan. a ajuns in iadul desertului. Printre ei: comandantul ale carui negocieri depasesc scrupulele; un videograf naiv care intentioneaza sa creeze un monument al razboiului pe web; un medic nepregatit pentru ceea ce o bomba la marginea drumului poate face pentru carnea umana; femeia singura din trupa care ingropa trauma neglijentei din copilarie pentru a face fata ororilor pe care crede ca le poate controla in cele din urma; si Schrøder, plutonierul.