Matterhorn

by Karl Marlantes

Intense, powerful, and compelling, Matterhorn is an epic war novel in the tradition of Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead and James Jones’s The Thin Red Line. It is the timeless story of a young Marine lieutenant, Waino Mellas, and his comrades in Bravo Company, who are dropped into the mountain jungle of Vietnam as boys and forced to fight their way into manhood. Standing in their way are not merely the North Vietnamese but also monsoon rain and mud, leeches and tigers, disease and malnutrition. Almost as daunting, it turns out, are the obstacles they discover between each other: racial tension, competing ambitions, and duplicitous superior officers. But when the company finds itself 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.

Written over the course of thirty years by a highly decorated Vietnam veteran, Matterhorn is a visceral and spellbinding novel about what it is like to be a young man at war. It is an unforgettable novel that transforms the tragedy of Vietnam into a powerful and universal story of courage, camaraderie, and sacrifice: a parable not only of the war in Vietnam but of all war, and a testament to the redemptive power of literature.


(From Publisher).

A graduate of Yale University and a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, Karl Marlantes served as a Marine in Vietnam, where he was awarded the Navy Cross, the Bronze Star, two Navy Commendation Medals for valour, two Purple Hearts, and ten air medals. This is his first novel. He lives in rural Washington State.

Set in 1969, this novel is an intriguing depiction of the Vietnam War, evoking the horror and trauma of such conflicts and the absurdity of war.

A stunning novel of the Vietnam War based on the author's own experience as a Marine in Vietnam.

Thirty years in the making this stunningly gritty fictional account of one US Marine's company's actions and endurance during the Vietnam War is a masterpiece that rivals even the greatest works of military fiction.

One of the most powerful and devastating war novels every written.

Marlantes intense and dramatic story telling makes this novel impossible to put down. More than just a story of how boys turn into men and men into soldiers. It is a searing indictment of the futility of war.