When a small unit of soldiers is separated from their command and left to fend for themselves in a hostile city, their only option is to keep moving, to evade the marauding gangs and tribesmen who rule the streets. As they wander, encountering a series of surreal episodes and haunting characters, the line between friend and enemy is blurred beyond recognition, along with the sanity of those who survive. At once ghostly and lyrical, terrifying and tender, gritty and yet profoundly illuminating, The Farther Shore marks the arrival of a powerful new voice in American fiction.
Matthew Eck enlisted in the Army in 1992 and served in Somalia and Haiti. After leaving the service, he earned a BA in English Literature from Wichita State University and a MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Montana. He lives in Kansas City, Missouri.
Awards:
Winner of the Milkweed National Fiction Prize
Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers
National Book Foundation 5 Under 35
Quotes:
“This is the first novel I’ve read to capture today’s postmodern warfare, waged in inexplicable locales for even more inexplicable reasons and with rules of engagement that make no sense.” Walter Kirn
“The first great 21st century war novel belongs to Matthew Eck.” Las Vegas Weekly, “Best Books of 2007”
“Heir to Hemingway, and damn near as powerful as Cormac McCarthy in The Road (2006), Eck has created a contemporary version of The Red Badge of Courage in this tale of one young man’s trial by fire in the pandemonium of war in an age of high-tech weaponry and low-grade morality.” Booklist (starred review)
“Despite his assertively precise language and hard, bullet-like sentences, the menace of vagueness itself is at the heart of Mr. Eck’s portrait of modern warfare.” New York Sun
“Eck’s spare, hard-knuckled prose proves well-suited to capturing the vagaries of America warriors engaged in nasty conflicts in forbidding corners of the globe.” Seattle Post-Intelligencer
“Worthy of addition to America’s cannon of war fiction. Short, sharp, devastating, The Farther Shore is a literary machine gun.” Kansas City Star
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Matthew Eck's debut novel and winner of the Milkweed National Fiction Prize.
“Heir to Hemingway, and damn near as powerful as Cormac McCarthy in The Road (2006), Eck has created a contemporary version of The Red Badge of Courage in this tale of one young man’s trial by fire in the pandemonium of war in an age of high-tech weaponry and low-grade morality.” —Booklist (STARRED REVIEW)
