Karl Marlantes Books

Young marine lieutenant, Waino Mellas, and his comrades in Bravo Company have been dropped into the mountain jungle of Vietnam, combatants in an increasingly desperate war. Standing in their way are the North Vietnamese, the monsoon rain and mud, leeches and tigers, and disease and malnutrition. As racial tension and competing ambition build, the group threatens to crack at any moment. When the company is surrounded and outnumbered by a massive enemy regiment, the Marines are thrust into the raw and all-consuming terror of combat. The experience will change them forever.

At the turn of the twentieth century, as the oppression of Russia's imperial rule takes its toll on Finland, the three Koski siblings - Ilmari, Matti and the politicised young Aino - are forced to flee. They settle among a community of Finns in Deep River - a town on the western edges of the United States. The brothers face the excitement and danger of pioneering this frontier wilderness. But while they are climbing and felling trees one-hundred metres high, Aino is organising the country's fledgling labour movements. As the Koskis strive to rebuild lives and families in an America in flux, they also try to hold fast to the traditions of a home they can never return to. And so the seasons change, the decades pass and the denizens of Deep River slip in and out of love; they become engineers and fishermen, midwives and widows, soldiers and fugitives. In this profoundly moving epic Karl Marlantes masterfully depicts the tyranny of nascent America, the limits of human survival and the enduring might of family love

In 1968, at 22, Karl Marlantes left his Oxford scholarship to serve in the US Marine Corps during the Vietnam War. The experience over thirteen months in the jungles of Southeast Asia profoundly impacted him, revealing the chaos of a conflict defined only by kill ratios and body counts. Returning home adorned with medals, he found the aftermath even more challenging. It took him four decades to confront his experiences, during which he created a fictionalized account of his war in MATTERHORN, recognized as a definitive Vietnam novel. WHAT IT IS LIKE TO GO TO WAR revisits Vietnam without the fictional lens, presenting the hard-earned truths that informed MATTERHORN. This work serves as an exorcism of Marlantes's combat experiences, a confession, and a philosophical guide for those about to face war. It offers a candid exploration of what it means to be a soldier, confront death, and take a life. Through this unflinching narrative, Marlantes provides insight into the profound complexities and emotional toll of war, revealing the stark realities that soldiers endure both on the battlefield and after they return home.

"Helsinki, 1947. Finland teeters between the Soviet Union and the West. Everyone is being watched. A wrong look or a wrong word could end in catastrophe. Natalya Bobrova, from Russia, and Louise Koski, from the United States, are young wives of their country's military attachâes. When they meet at an embassy party, their husbands, Arnie and Mikhail, both world-class skiers, drunkenly challenge each other to a friendly-but secret-cross-country wilderness race. Louise is delighted, but Natalya is worried. Stalin and Beria's secret police rule with unforgiving brutality. If news of the race gets out and Mikhail loses, Natalya knows it would mean his death, her imprisonment, and the loss of her two children. Meanwhile, Louise, who is childless, uses the race as an opportunity to raise money for a local orphanage, naive to the danger it will bring to Natalya and her family. Too late to stop Louise's scheme, a horrified Natalya watches as news of the race spreads across the globe as newspapers and politicians spin it as a symbolic battle: freedom versus communism. Desperate to undo her mistake, Louise must reach Arnie to tell him to throw the race and save Mikhail-but how? The two racers are in a world of their own, unreachable in Finland's arctic wilderness."--