The Allied soldiers who witnessed the atrocities committed in WWII concentration camps often used the phrase: “I know what I’m fighting for.”
No such moral certainty exists for the allied soldiers in Afghanistan in Andrew O’Hagan’s very readable new novel. Luke is an unlikely soldier who finds himself tasked with training up members of the Afghan army.
Meanwhile, his grandmother Anne is teetering on the edge of dementia, but her senior moments betray a dark sort of sense that suggest unresolved secrets in her own past, and an explanation for her emotional neglect of Luke’s mother, Alice. The novel shuttles between these two strands, gradually pulling them closer.
