Almost 30 years ago the single best work of fiction to come out of the Vietnam War was published. Tim O’Brien’s pitch perfect The Things They Carried is still a must read. Although labeled a work of fiction, there isn’t much about it that seems fictional. It makes the very short list of the greatest war books, which is saying something because there are a lot of war books.

We are now seeing a steady stream of fiction based around the Iraq War. I have found several of these books compelling, but I know not everyone wants to read a war novel. So rather than do a separate review for each one I have decided to point my readers in the direction of three of the best. All three were finalists for the National Book Award and one of them won. The three books are The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers, Redeployment by Phil Klay (the winner), and Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain, which was made into a rather unfortunate movie.

Here are a few facts. Klay and Powers are both war veterans. These were also their first works of fiction, which is truly remarkable when you see how accomplished the writing is. Klay’s book offers a collection of short stories, while the other two are novels.

All three books contain some harrowing war scenes but the books are as much about the aftermath of war as the war itself. Even when the war is over, it is not really over. The soldiers who are not dead are often traumatized, not to mention the toll on the people all around them. Which leads me to the strongest possible warning about these books. These are for adults only and not for the faint of heart. Sex and violence abound.

The Yellow Birds: A Novel

By Kevin Powers
2013
256 pages / 5 hours and 23 minutes
Fiction

The Yellow Birds tells the story of two soldiers who have been together since basic training. One has made a promise to bring the other home safely. They do everything they can to protect one another. But how far will they go?

Redeployment

By Phil Klay
2014
304 pages / 7 hours and 46 minutes
Fiction

Redeployment is difficult to summarize because it’s a series of short stories. We meet a soldier who had to shoot dogs because they were eating human corpses, and then he has to settle back into his nice, quiet neighborhood. In one absurd story a foreign service officer is supposed to teach Iraqis to play baseball. War is absurd and some wars are more absurd than others.

Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk

By Ben Fountain
2012
320 pages / 11 hours and 39 minutes
Fiction

Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk is about the title soldier being honored during halftime at a Dallas Cowboys football game. The eight surviving members of his squad are being honored for their bravery in a fierce firefight in an effort to rekindle public support for the war. Nothing like trotting out young heroes at halftime of the game of America’s team to rally the country. But Billy Lynn has a lot going on inside himself and with the people who surround him. And it turns out that, even though it happens at a football game, this book is very much about the terrors of war.

We all have some reckoning to do with the war. Not everyone is going to want to spend their reading time recounting such difficult events. But these aren’t just great war books. They are great books, even if the war wasn’t so great.