Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

“Extraordinary . . . as close to the Great American novel as anyone is likely to come these days.”—Madison Smartt Bell

Set at the height of the Iraq War, PEN/Hemingway Award-winner Ben Fountain’s razor sharp satire follows the surviving members of the heroic Bravo Squad—a group of young soldiers made famous by a ferocious firefight caught on tape by an embedded Fox News crew—as they make their last appearance in a media-intensive “Victory Tour” at America’s football mecca, Texas Stadium, on Thanksgiving Day. Among the Bravos is nineteen-year-old Specialist Billy Lynn, winner of the Silver Star for his bravery in the firefight. Over the course of this day, Billy will begin to understand difficult truths about himself, his country, his struggling family, his flag-waving fellow citizens, and his brothers-in-arms—soldiers both dead and alive. In the final few hours before returning to Iraq, the young soldier will drink and brawl, yearn for home and mourn those missing, face a heart-wrenching decision, and discover pure love and a bitter wisdom far beyond his years.

Poignant, riotously funny, and exquisitely heartbreaking, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk is a devastating portrait of our time.