The Watch

(Paperback)

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A powerful and affecting novel imagining the inner turmoil of soldiers on a military base in Afghanistan. Longlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. Following a desperate night-long battle, a group of beleaguered soldiers in an isolated base in Kandahar are faced with a lone woman demanding the return of her brother's body. Is she a spy, a black widow, a lunatic or what she claims to be- a grieving sister intent on burying her brother according to local rites As she persists, single-minded in her mission, the camp's tense, claustrophobic atmosphere comes to a boil as the men argue about what to do next. The Watch takes an age-old story - the myth of Antigone - and hurls it into present-day Afghanistan. The result is a gripping, deeply affecting book that brilliantly exposes the realities of war. It is also our most powerful expression to date of the nature and futility of this very contemporary conflict.

Author Bio

Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya was born in India and educated in politics and philosophy at Calcutta University and the University of Pennsylvania. His previous two novels, The Gabriel Club and The Storyteller of Marrakesh, have been published in eleven languages in sixteen countries. He lives in New York.