Green on Blue
Elliot Ackerman, 2015
Scribner
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781476778563
Summary
From a decorated veteran of the Iraq and Afghan Wars, and White House Fellow, a stirring debut novel about a young Afghan orphan and the harrowing, intractable nature of war.
Aziz and his older brother Ali are coming of age in a village amid the pine forests and endless mountains of eastern Afghanistan. There is no school, but their mother teaches them to read and write, and once a month sends the boys on a two-day journey to the bazaar. They are poor, but inside their mud-walled home, the family has stability, love, and routine.
When a convoy of armed men arrives in their village one day, their world crumbles. The boys survive and make their way to a small city, where they sleep among other orphans. They learn to beg, and, eventually, they earn work and trust from the local shopkeepers. Ali saves their money and sends Aziz to school at the madrassa, but when US forces invade the country, militants strike back. A bomb explodes in the market, and Ali is brutally injured.
In the hospital, Aziz meets an Afghan wearing an American uniform. To save his brother, Aziz must join the Special Lashkar, a US-funded militia. No longer a boy, but not yet a man, he departs for the untamed border. Trapped in a conflict both savage and entirely contrived, Aziz struggles to understand his place. Will he embrace the brutality of war or leave it behind, and risk placing his brother—and a young woman he comes to love—in jeopardy?
Having served five tours of duty in Afghanistan and Iraq, Elliot Ackerman has written a gripping, morally complex debut novel, an astonishing feat of empathy and imagination about boys caught in a deadly conflict. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—April 12, 1980
• Where—Los Angeles, California, USA
• Education—B.A., M.A., Tufts University
• Currently—lives in Washington, D.C., and New York City
Elliot Ackerman is an American author, currently based out of Istanbul. He is the son of businessman Peter Ackerman and the brother of mathematician and wrestler Nate Ackerman.
Early life
At the age of 9, his family moved to London where he lived until the family moved back to Washington, DC, when he was 15. He studied literature and history at Tufts University, graduating summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in 2003, in a special program to earn Bachelor's and Master's degrees in 5 years, rather than the usual six. He holds a Master’s degree in International Affairs from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and has completed many of the United States military’s most challenging special operations training courses.
Career
Beginning in 2003, Ackerman spent eight years in the U.S. military as both an infantry and special operations officer. He served multiple tours of duty in the Middle East and Southwest Asia. As a Marine Corps Special Operations Team Leader, he operated as the primary combat advisor to a 700-man Afghan commando battalion responsible for capture operations against senior Taliban leadership. He also led a 75-man platoon that aided in relief operations in post-Katrina New Orleans.
Ackerman served as Chief Operating Officer of Americans Elect, a political organization founded and chaired by his father, Peter Ackerman, and continues to serve on its Board of Advisors. Americans Elect is known primarily for its efforts to stage a national online primary for the 2012 US Presidential Election. As one of its officers, Ackerman was interviewed extensively, notably on NPR's Talk of the Nation.
He has served on the board of the Afghan Scholars Initiative and as an advisor to the No Greater Sacrifice scholarship fund. Most recently, Ackerman served as a White House Fellow in the Obama Administration.
Ackerman divides his time between Washington, D.C., and New York City.
Writing
Ackerman's fiction and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Atlantic, New Republic, New York Times Magazine, Ecotone and others. He is also a contributor to the Daily Beast, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He has been interviewed in the Washington Post, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal and appeared on Charlie Rose, Colbert Report, NPR's Talk of the Nation, Meet the Press, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, Al Jazeera and PBS NewsHour among others.
Ackerman's first novel, Green on Blue, published in 2015, with Publishers Weekly referring to the novel as "bleak and uncompromising, a powerful war story that borders on the noir." Los Angeles Review of Books describes the novel as a radical departure from veterans writing thus far due to his choice of a first person narrator, the lowly Aziz, a poor soldier in a local militia.
Military Honors
Ackerman is a decorated veteran, having earned a Silver Star and Purple Heart for his role leading a Rifle Platoon in the November 2004 Second Battle of Fallujah and a Bronze Star for Valor while leading a Marine Corps Special Operations Team in Afghanistan in 2008. Ackerman is also a recipient of the Major General Edwin B. Wheeler Award for Infantry Excellence. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 2/10/2015.)
Book Reviews
In Ackerman’s debut novel, young Aziz Iqtbal and his older brother, Ali, live in the remote agriculture hamlet of Sperkai, Afghanistan, until a mortar round fired by the Taliban leader Garzan destroys their home and family.... Ackemna’s novel is bleak and uncompromising, a powerful war story that borders on the noir.
Publishers Weekly
The lives of the characters are immensely complicated by the violence and political situation that surround them, and along the way, we witness their wrestling with the compromises they feel compelled to make.... Ackerman...does justice to the political and moral difficulties of contemporary Afghanistan.
Kirkus Reviews
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