Phil Klay is a graduate of Dartmouth College and a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps. He served in Iraqs Anbar Province from January 2007 to February 2008 as a Public Affairs Officer. After being discharged he went to Hunter College and received an MFA.
His story Redeployment was originally published in Granta and is included in Fire and Forget: Short Stories from the Long War. His writing has also appeared in the New York Times, Newsweek, The Daily Beast, the New York Daily News, Tin House, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2012.
Vulture (2025) Phoebe Greenwood "Vulture is so sharp and funny, and Phoebe Greenwood writes with such intelligence, such a flair for character and such an eye for the details of life in a war zone, that as you barrel forward you at first don't notice just how much sting there is to this book, and then you're left at the end, stunned and amazed. A superb novel on reporting and war."
The Satisfaction Cafe (2025) Kathy Wang "Kathy Wang creates remarkably nuanced and affecting characters with such ease and economy. I found myself utterly captivated by The Satisfaction Cafe, immediately pulled into the beautifully told sweep of a whole life. A marvelous book."
Small Rain (2024) Garth Greenwell "Small Rain is a marvel, one of America's greatest writers working at the top of his game, moving into new territory with force and grace and wisdom and overwhelming beauty."
Prophet (2023) Sin Blaché and Helen Macdonald "Prophet is a wildly fun, inventive, funny, and terrifying book, with a superb mystery that gets ever more compelling and weird and, horrifyingly, familiar. This book finds the nightmare in the comforting lies we tell ourselves about our pasts, and how they inform our present."
The Unfolding (2022) A M Homes "Compelling, funny, horrifying, and tremendously astute, this novel cuts right to the bone."
The Long Corner (2022) Alexander Maksik "The Long Corner is a sharp, witty and utterly engrossing novel about culture, kitsch, cynicism, and all the ways we corrupt what is most important to us. I laughed out loud, I couldn't get enough of the characters, and I couldn't put it down."
The World Cannot Give (2022) Tara Isabella Burton "I love this book. Tara Isabella Burton writes beautifully about beauty, and about transcendence and longing and desire. Her characters are so vibrantly alive, so searching, so raw, so foolish and so profound. Wonderful from start to finish."
2034 (2021) Elliot Ackerman and Admiral James Stavridis USN "I could not stop reading 2034. With sharply drawn, vibrant characters caught in an all too plausible future conflict, the novel left me fascinated, moved, thrilled and, ultimately, haunted."
Hades, Argentina (2021) Daniel Loedel "Hades, Argentina brilliantly explores the fault lines between heroism and complicity, guilt and trauma, and love and betrayal. Daniel Loedel has written a haunting and beautiful novel."
Homeland Elegies (2020) Ayad Akhtar "The astonishing work of an absolutely brilliant writer. With exquisite prose and lacerating honesty, Ayad Akhtar reveals the intersections of art, finance, race, religion, academia and empire."
Fire in the Blood (2020) Perry O'Brien "With Fire in the Blood's close observations of the psychology of men and violence, of the wide gulfs between New York City's social classes that can shrink to nothing in an instant, and its brilliant inversion of the classic mystery plot, Perry O'Brien has written a tremendously compelling debut of rare skill."
Shiner (2020) Amy Jo Burns "Amy Jo Burns writes masterful sentences changed with all the beauty and rage and struggle of her characters. From the first paragraph to the last, Burns builds a vibrant and complex story of myths and miracles and moonshiners, as well as of the women who fight for their lives and their dignity as their future in a culture that all too often strangles all three. Shiner is a gorgeous novel."
Burn-In (2020) August Cole and P W Singer "Wrapped in this propulsive thriller is a fascinating analysis of our possible near-future, where promises of a techno-utopia veer into surveillance-state nightmare. Cole and Singer brilliantly and terrifyingly imagine a realistic intersection of terrorism, technology, and policing."
Empire City (2020) Matt Gallagher "A brilliant and daring novel. Gallagher’s prose is sharp, energetic and witty, his characters are fiercely alive, and the cracked vision of America he creates is a monstrous thing of beauty."
Red, White, Blue (2018) Lea Carpenter "Finally, the perfect spy novel for the post–9/11 era. Carpenter’s Red, White, Blue brilliantly evokes the world of American espionage in a time of crisis, as the struggle to fight terrorism conflicts with longer-term views of American interests and agents find themselves trapped within conflicting loyalties to friends, to assets, to family, and to country. Thrilling, provocative, and powerfully moving."
The Confusion of Languages (2017) Siobhan Fallon "A gripping, cleverly plotted novel with surprising bite. Fallon carefully builds the cloistered world of two Army spouses living in the Middle East during the Arab Spring, a world whose edges and limitations we only start to glimpse as the two women spiral toward tragedy."
Spoils (2017) Brian Van Reet "Brian Van Reet's beautiful, intense, and at times disturbing novel Spoils traces the motivations and desires of combatants on both sides of the Iraq War, showing us what happens when increasing violence and chaos start to warp the choices they're able to make."
