Dexter Filkins will discuss his book The Forever War. The book is about what he saw during his years of reporting as the New York Times Baghdad correspondent. The OPC Book Night will also feature New Yorker writer Lawrence Wright whose book The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 is the definitive work on Al-Qaeda winning him the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-fiction.
Two tributes to Dexter Filkins’ book The Forever War sum up the kind of praise that this book has garnered. From The New Yorker’s George Packer: “The Forever War is already a classic – it has the timeless feel of all great war literature. A lot has been written about Iraq and Afghanistan, but no one has seen as much, survived as much, and registered the horror with such sad eloquence as Dexter Filkins.”
And from the Atlantic Monthly’s Jeffrey Goldberg: “Dexter Filkins is the preeminent war correspondent of my generation, fearless, compassionate, and brutally honest. In an age of know-it-all pundits and preening bloggers, Filkins is the real thing. He’s been everywhere, he’s seen everything, and, miraculously, he’s lived to tell the tale… . It is one of the best books about war that I have ever read. It will stay with me forever.”
Filkins was reporting from a Taliban controlled Afghanistan even before the attacks on America in 2001 and he reported on the ground in Baghdad from 2003 to 2006 for The New York Times so he has been on the frontline of the “War against Terror” and indeed has seen it all. His book is so named because it feels like this war will go on without end just as the concept of revenge can continue into generations forever.
The perspective that Filkins gives the reader is not about politics or military logistics, but he gives a human face to war by intimately sharing a kaleidoscope of stories. He manages to capture and to convey what it is like to be at the scene of a suicide bombing, to cradle a son blinded by an exploding car bomb, to understand the fear and strength of Marines in street-to-street fighting in Fallujah, to witness a public amputation performed by the Taliban in an arena in Kabul. It is a visceral understanding that engulfs the reader.
The Forever War [Alfred A. Knopf, 2008] is Filkins’ first-person account of what he saw in years reported with empathy, brutal honesty and rigor. David Halberstam hailed his work as “reporting of the highest quality imaginable.”
Filkins is no stranger to the OPC having won two awards in subsequent years – the 2004 Hal Boyle newspaper Award for his daily stories on fighting in Fallujah and the 2005 Ed Cunningham magazine Award for “The Fall of the Warrior King” in The New York Times Magazine.
The Book Night will also feature New Yorker writer Lawrence Wright whose book The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 [Alfred A. Knopf, 2006] is the definitive work on Al-Qaeda winning him the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-fiction. Wright was featured in an OPC Book Night to a capacity audience in October 2006 and he won OPC’s 2002 Ed Cunningham magazine Award for his story “The Man Behind bin Laden” in The New Yorker. Wright will act as interlocutor and engage Filkins in a conversation that is sure to be informative and dynamic.
Co-sponsored by The World Policy Institute, the Book Night and Conversation on Thursday, November 6 will begin with a reception at 6 p.m. and talk at 6:30 p.m. at Club Quarters, 40 West 45 Street. Books of both authors will be available for sale and signing.