My Life as a Foreign Country

'My Life as a Foreign Country is brilliant and beautiful. It surely ranks with the best war memoirs I've ever encountered - a humane, heartbreaking, and expertly crafted work of literature.' Tim O'Brien, author of The Things They Carried

Spanning pre-deployment to combat zone, World War I to Vietnam, boredom to blood lust, roadside bombs to open mic nights, this book shows what it means to be a soldier and a human being.

In 2003, Sergeant Brian Turner was at the head of a convoy of 3,500 US soldiers as they entered the Iraqi desert.

Now, still stalked by conflict, he retraces his war experience and meditates on the echoes between his story and those of generations of soldiers marching to battle before him.

Spanning pre-deployment to combat zone, World War I to Vietnam, boredom to bloodlust, roadside bombs to open mic nights, My Life as a Foreign Country asks what it means to be a soldier and a human being.


‘The most haunting book I read this year’
Irish Times

‘His shrapnel-like chapters come at you from all angles… Compulsive’
Guardian

‘Turner is a soldier with the soul of a poet’
Daily Telegraph

‘Wrathful, wry and incantatory’
Erica Wagner, New Statesman

‘Beautiful, electrifying and full of pain’
Washington Post