From the author of Waiting for Eden and the National Book Award Finalist Dark at the Crossing, a âcompassionate, provocative, and aliveâ (Vogue.com) debut war story about a young Afghan orphan, âGreen on Blue is harrowing, brutal, and utterly absorbing. With spare prose, Ackerman has spun a morally complex tale of revenge, loyalty, and brotherly loveâ (Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner).
Aziz and his older brother Ali are coming of age in a village amid the pine forests and endless mountains of eastern Afghanistan. They are poor, but inside their mud-walled home, the family has stability, love, and routine. One day a convoy of armed men arrives in their village and their world crumbles. The boys survive and make their way to a small city, where they gradually begin to piece together their lives. But when US forces invade the country, militants strike back. A bomb explodes in the market, and Ali is brutally injured.
To save his brother, Aziz must join the Special Lashkar, a US-funded militia. As he rises through the ranks, Aziz becomes mired in the dark underpinnings of his countryâs war, witnessing clashes between rival Afghan groupsâwhat US soldiers call âgreen on greenâ attacksâand those on US forces by Afghan soldiers, violence known as âgreen on blue.â Trapped in a conflict both savage and contrived, Aziz struggles to understand his place. Will he embrace the brutality of war or leave it behind, and risk placing his brotherâand a young woman he has come to loveâin jeopardy?
Green on Blue has broken new ground in the literature of our most recent wars, accomplishing an astonishing feat of empathy and imagination. Writing from the Afghan perspective, âElliot Ackerman has done something brave as a writer and even braver as a soldier: He has touched, for real, the culture and soul of his enemyâ (The New York Times Book Review).