What is the best fiction — or shall we say novels — on small wars, guerrilla, terrorism, insurgency, and counterinsurgency? And why not revolution?
A few classics come to mind, such as Rudyard Kipling’s Kim, Jean Larteguy’s The Centurions,
Novels can fill an important gap here — and complement the academic literature on the subject. Fiction might be able get across something that is difficult to do in how-to doctrines or even political philosophy: the emotion, what drives people, what they are willing to fight for, what an revolutionary movement is actually about, the cause. Then one could include books like Theodor Herzl’s Altneuland or, from a critical angle, perhaps Ayn Rand’s We the Living?
On the background of this question: we’re currently putting together a recommended reading list for a forthcoming textbook, Understanding Counterinsurgency. And after the question on the greatest films on small wars triggered such an amazing response from our readership with almost 50 thoughtful comments, we thought we could repeat the exercise for fiction. Needless to say, the constructive contribution of our readership — that is you — will be acknowledged in the book.
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I would nominate Tolstoy’s Hadji Murad for the perspective from a conflicted insurgent.
Two German books had chapters devoted to insurgency warfare (anti-partisan ops):
The Forgotten Soldier by Guy Sajer
The Black March by Peter Neumann
The Ugly American
I second Hadji Murad, and also while I’m thinking of Russian authors, Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time.
I would add to the list these too:
For contemporary resonance: George McDonald Fraser’s Flashman.
For a vision of the future: Bruce Sterling’s Distraction. ’2044 and the US is coming apartr at the seams… The new Cold War is with the Dutch and mostly fought over the Net. The notion of central government is almost meaningless.’
Both sides of the COIN are to be found in Rifleman Dodd by C.S. Forester. I really love this book. I think Dodd shows the most important of soldierly qualities in spades; completely unshakeable equanimity.
And perhaps most of all George Orwell’s Shooting an Elephant.
In the spirit of small war aspects in a big big war, I’d nominate John Hersey’s “A Bell for Adano”
“The Ugly American”
It puts the much overrated book “The Quiet American” to shame. I’ve read both and don’t really consider Graham Greene’s book to be of much value to students studying counter-insurgency and small wars. If I didn’t know anything about Greene, it would seem to me to be more about the author’s infatuation with Asian women, Catholic guilt, and anti-Americanism.
I hear Leon Uris’ “Trinity” is rather good too.
Oh yes, and the Flashman books are always worth a read!
Some American novels from the Viet Nam War:
Sand in the Wind – Robert Roth
The Lionheads – Josiah Bunting
Incident at Muc Wa – Daniel Ford
Parthian Shot – Loyd Little
In the Village of the Man – Loyd Little
Fields of Fire – James Webb
The Short Timers – Gustav Hasford
The Phantom Blooper – Gustav Hasford
The Dying Place – David Maurer
Sympathy for the Devil – Kent Anderson
CW2 – Layne Heath
The Blue Deep – Layne Heath
Sergeant Dickinson – Jerome Gold
Wow — If you had to pick, say, three, for students of that subject: which ones would you pick and why? If I may ask.
Hi, I would pick: Parthian Shot, Sand in the Wind, Sympathy for the Devil and In the Village of the Man. I’m not sure why, I’ll have to think about it. Thanks.
I guess Loyd Little (Parthian Shot, In the Village of the Man) and Kent Anderson (Sympathy for the Devil) seem to have an intrinsic understanding that the Vietnamese are human beings and not abstractions for self-realisation. Robert Roth (Sand in the Wind) struggles with the concept but is painfully honest about it.
Aside from that, these four novels capture well the atmosphere of the different periods of the conflict they describe. The authorial voices probably most resemble people from the American expat community that I remember from growing up in Singapore during the 70s. They had a unique sense of humour.
Thank you — your thoughts are much appreciated. TR
Rosemary Sutcliff’s ‘Frontier Wolf’ (Don’t be put off by it being a children’s book.)
John Masters ‘Bhowani Junction’
George MacDonald-Fraser ‘The McAuslan Series’ (Highly recommended for its breadth.)
John Buchan ‘Greenmantle’, ‘The Courts of the Morning’
J.T. Edson’s (very superior) Western novels especially the Ole Devil Hardin and Civil War novels (Don’t be put off by them being westerns.)
Pretty much any colonial novel, from G.A. Henty to J.G. Farrell will prove to be of some use. There are simply too many to mention.
-Oh, and Bill Samson aka ‘The Wolf of Kabul’! He’s a comics character but what the hell. At least whenever the BBC announces that we’re winning in Afghanistan 30 Taliban at a time you can shout ‘Klicki Ba sings in my hands!’ at the screen.
Revolution, how about Andre Malraux, Man’s Fate?
I think Dave Betz makes a great slection with RIFLEMAN DODD. I wrote a review of it for INFANTRY magazine some years ago. Originally, they were resistant because it was a novel, but I was able to convince them of its worthiness. It is especially useful if for no other reason than it expands the COIN narrative beyond Vietnam, Malaya, Algeria, Afghanistan and El Salvador.
Leon Uris’ THE HAJ is okay, also as a vehicle for introducing certain concepts (101 level stuff), but there are better works out there
“Feast of Bones” by Daniel Bolger. A portrayal of a Soviet patatrooper commander from training through Grenada and lastly in Afghansitan as he adapts his unit from a roadbound unit to one that “swims” in the ocean of the countryside in the last days of the Soviet occupation.
“The 13th Valley” by John M. Del Vecchio deals with an infantry unit in Vietnam as individual member sof the unit navagate the intellecltual of war and the realites of the battlefield.
I think there’s plenty of sci-fi books that “do” war a hell of a lot better than “normal” fiction.
For what you’re talking about, I’d say that The Player of Games and Dune are probably good bets.
The Player of Games – Iain M. Banks: a novel about the relationship between culture, ideas and strategy. The way in which two people can play a given game (war) in two completely different ways that are reflective of their personal beliefs and culture.
Dune – Frank Herbert: A bunch of freedom fighters running around a desert, waging jihad against the “invincible” troops of the emporer and settling everything with nukes. I’m sure that’s in some NSC nightmare scenario somewhere.
There’s a ton of good sci fi books that deal with war, conflict and associated moral issues. I don’t really pay attention to the space opera crap, but I can see why the mere presence of such books puts people off reading the genre, which is a shame in my opinion. As a genre, I think science fiction has a lot to offer on the subject since some of the smartest work involves interaction between completely different and unknown (imagined) cultures. I’d advise people trying to get a grip on cultural relativism to read Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card (and Ender’s Game first but that’s a separate matter). If you want, I can come up with more later, but I’m on a deadline!
Oy! of course DUNE! And “Children of DUNE” for understanding the cultural side of warfare; ie for understanding the Human Terrain…
Hemingway’s “For Whom The Bell Tolls” is a great case-study in foreign internal defense, an important subset of small wars doctrine. It’s widely read within the FID/UW community.
Pete Kaiser’s recommendation of FEAST OF BONES is spot on. But disagree with 13th VALLEY as a Small Wars novel.
Jack McDonald’s post made me recall a pretty good sci-fi novel from 1990 (back when we called it LIC), A SMALL COLONIAL WAR by Robert Frezza.
All Quiet on the Western Front by Eric Maria Remarque. It is a great war novel but not on small war. Story of a unravels around 1st World War.
Other books pop up in mind are
War & Peace Leo Tolstoy
Kurt Vonegut’s Slaughter House Five
Science fiction:
Kim Stanley Robinson’s trilogy : Red Mars, Green Mars and Blue Mars ( these fictions reminds me Avatar)
And sequels to above mentioned novels that were also excellent: The Praetorians by Larteguy and Frezza’s Fire in a Faraway Place
I’ve always like “An Ice-cream War” by William Boyd
http://www.amazon.com/Ice-Cream-War-Novel-William-Boyd/dp/0375705023
This might be a little out there, as they’re primarily aimed at teenagers.
John Marsden wrote seven novels for the Tomorrow series. It’s set in Australia; a group of friends go camping, and return from the bush to find that an un-named South-East Asian country has completely over-run Australia, and they begin a guerrilla/terrorism campaign.
It doesn’t feature the ideological/recruitment component of insurgency much, which is probably the books’ greatest weakness for this situation, but it does give a suggestion at the mindset of the terrorists/freedom-fighters, their motivations, touching on how they survive, as well as taking the fight to the enemy. The sort of thing they get up to, and how, falls very nicely into the latter stages of the strategy that Thompson set out (if the govt. is successful).
The first one is Tomorrow When the War Began. Reading the whole series would be excessive, but the first one, or two, might give a good impression.
There must be better ones but “A star called Henry” by Roddy Doyle about the Irish War of Independence is pretty good.
Virtually anything Gerald Seymour wrote about Northern Ireland was good. I’d pick Harry’s Game, Field of Blood and Journeyman Tailor as being particularly worth reading.
This might be a little “out there”, but how about novels or short stories dissecting the – at times – disorienting experience of immigrants in the UK, US, Canada, etc. ? A certain subset are a target for recruitment abroad and it might be helpful to understand the emotional milieu: the difficulties, confusion, “pulled-at-in-different-directions” nature of the diaspora. Do you any of you think such a topic is applicable, or is it outside the scope of your discussions?
It’s an enormous literature, and any list would be huge, but I was thinking along the lines of Bharati Mukherjee’s “Management of Grief” (but I imagine others may come up with better examples):
” “The Management of Grief” is a poignant fictional account of one woman’s reaction to the 1985 bombing of Air India Flight 182. It was first published in 1988 in the collection The Middleman and Other Stories, winner of the 1988 National Book Critics Circle Award. “The Management of Grief” tells the story of Shaila Bhave, an Indian Canadian Hindu who has lost her husband and two sons in the crash. In third person narration, Shaila recounts the emotional events surrounding the event and explores their effects on herself, the Indian Canadian community, and mainstream Euro-Canadians. The clumsy intervention of a government social worker represents the missteps of the Canadian government in the general handling of the catastrophe.”
http://www.answers.com/topic/the-management-of-grief
There is the following excerpt from the above link, too:
“She was enraged by the Canadian government’s interpretation of the crash as a foreign, “Indian” matter when the overwhelmingly majority of the victims were Canadian citizens. In a book-length investigation and account of the incident, The Sorrow and the Terror, co-written with Blaise, Mukherjee pieces together the bombing and events leading up to it, charging the government with ignoring clear signs of Khalistani terrorism cultivated on Canadian soil. Mukherjee argues that the government dismissed the escalating Indian Canadian factionalism (e.g. Canadian Khalistanis vs. Canadian Hindus) as a “cultural” struggle that would be best settled among the “Indians.” She blames Canada’s official policy of “multiculturalism,” which ostensibly encourages tolerance and equality but effectively fosters division and discrimination across racial boundaries.”
I agree re: Feast of Bones and The Centurions and I would add Larteguy’s The Praetorians.
What happened to Seven Pillars of Wisdom? Thought that would have been at the top of the list. Too cliche?
I just have to second For Whom the Bell Tolls Seriously, this book is all about a guerilla planning an attack on a target, and having to work with an insurgency.
Scifi I like Forever Peace, with strange drone attack similarities. Also the LeGuin’s Word for World is Forest.
For comics, Fables starting with the “Homeland” story arc.
Nobody should ever be made to read Ayn Rand-not unless it were part of some weird, Guantanamo Bay/waterboarding-style mental torture process. Ayn Rand makes Hitler’s arguments for book-burning look good, and that’s really saying something.
Can I by contrast put a word in for Primo Levi’s ‘If not now, when?’ It’s easily the best book I’ve read on partisan warfare, and makes Hemingway’s ‘For whom the Bell Tolls’ (which I once very much admired) look rather immature by comparison.
good shout Pericles. I’d forgotten about that one. Primo was actually a partisan himself for a while wasnt he? (albeit in Italy not the eastern front where the book was set)
Thanks to everybody for the great suggestions. It wasn’t easy to come up with a list of 20 books out of all of these. Particularly since I haven’t read many of them. The link to this discussion will be included in the book’s reading list — so if you would like to add suggestions or opinions, feel free to do so.
“the Secret Agent” by Joseph Conrad and “The Man Who Was Thursday” by C.K.Chesterson for 19th century urban terrorism. And of course “Animal Farm” for revolution..and “The Octopus” by Frnk norris for a rural revolt against urban corporate interests..
I’ve recommended this every time the question comes up.
The Great Decision: Jefferson, Adams, Marshall, and the Battle for the Supreme Court. It is not about combat or the military, but there are valuable lessons that are relevant to any leader at any echelon in a small war. The takeaway for a junior officer would be to observe how Chief Justice Marshall walked the fine line between (1) a confrontation with President Jefferson that could undermine the Court’s power and (2) issuing a ruling that could appear to bow to the President’s power and thus undermine the rule of law by making it malleable to the prevaling political winds. He took a very awkward and controversial case (Marbury v. Madison) at a time when the Court was politically very weak and most people could not even agree on the role of the Court. Despite the position of weakness, he delivered a decision that was revolutionary at the time, but that we now take as an obvious given: the Court’s power of judicial review. In doing so, he avoided a significant confrontation with the President and also expanded the power of the judicial branch.
It is a good lesson in how someone in a position of weakness can prevail and influence significant change if he focuses upon creatively using the tools available rather than just griping about not having enough money or firepower or whining about overly restrictive ROE.
If ever a book was propaganda it’s this one, but Leon Uris’ Exodus nonetheless has some great sections on the emotions of war against the odds, and the motivating power of nationalism.
Given that Malaya is often cited as the great model for COIN emulation, how about And the Rain My Drink by Han Suyin, which is about the Emergency (including jungle warfare, New Villages, etc.) from the viewpoint of the Chinese.
We’ve done films and novels, now I want to add a play to the list. Last night I saw the RSC perform David Greig’s Dunsinane, and it was the most magnificent exposition on the dilemmas of COIN (and foreign occupation in general).
It had the well meaning general, struggling to reconcile his pain at the deaths of his men with the need to compromise. The feckless leader, installed by the foreign forces, and content to play all sides off one another. The natives, with their impenetrable allegiances and impossible languages. The warlords. The shadowy resistance. The unheroic nature of death in peacekeeping operations. I could happily go on – it dealt with every issue of war. It did so humanely, emotionally, and with a surprising number of laughs.
It should be on every young officer’s reading list.
I forgot about Jack London’s “The Iron Heel” for urban revolution..
I know the the “Iron Heel was a late entry, but who can forget “Ecotopia: The Notebooks and Reports of William Weston” by Ernest Callenbach, 1975″. I forgot of course. The Pacific states break off and form their own country and survive the invasion by the US
hai,
anybody aware or respnse of diasporic response to 9/11 attacks through fiction.
please name the novels and novelists
Hi,
I was quite flattered to see that my two novels set in Asia have been mentioned as possibilities to be included in your fascinating idea of novels on war (small and otherwise). I recently posted online what I call a picture book (non-fiction) of pictures taken when I was stationed as a Green Beret among the Hre Montagnards in Vietnam.
Thank you for the kind comments on your site.
PS: Parthian Shot won the PEN-Hemingway Award for best first novel published in 1975.