The Things They Carrieddepicts the men of Alpha Company: Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and the character Tim O’Brien, who has survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer at the age of forty-three.
Taught everywhere—from high school classrooms to graduate seminars in creative writing—it has become required reading for any American and continues to challenge readers in their perceptions of fact and fiction, war and peace, courage and fear and longing.
The Things They Carriedwon France's prestigious Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize; it was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Tim O’Brien received the 1979 National Book Award for
Going After Cacciato. Among his other books are
In the Lake of the Woods,
Tomcat in Love,
If I Die in a Combat Zone, and
July, July.
The Things They Carriedis as good as any piece of literature can get . . . It is controlled and wild, deep and tough, perceptive and shrewd. --Chicago Sun Times
[A] marvel of storytelling.... In prose that combines the sharp, unsentimental rhythms of Hemingway with gentler, more lyrical descriptions, Mr. O'Brien gives the reader a shockingly visceral sense of what it felt l“3
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