A Rumor of War

A singular and marvellous work – a soldier’s-eye account that tells us, as no other book that I can think of has done, what it was actually like to be fighting in this hellish jungle * New York Times *All men who go to war experience a moral as well as a physical odyssey, but few were as dramatic as that of Philip Caputo … a sensation that was elevated to instant classic status … I would rate his book much higher than Michael Herr’s celebrated Dispatches … much of the value of this immensely readable tale of a young man’s murderous follies is that he tells many things that are not peculiar to Vietnam, but embrace the behaviour and feelings – or lack of them – of soldiers on all battlefields – Max Hastings * Sunday Times *Unparalleled in its honesty, unapologetic in its candour and singular in its insights into the minds and hearts of men in combat, this book is as powerful to read today as the day it was published in 1977. Caputo has more than earned his place beside Sassoon, Owen, Vonnegut, and Heller – Kevin PowersTo call this the best book about Vietnam is to trivialize it. A Rumour of War is a dangerous and even subversive book, the first to insist that readers asks themselves the questions: How would I have acted? To what lengths would I have gone to survive? A terrifying book, it will make the strongest among us weep * Los Angeles Times Book Review *Caputo’s troubled, searching meditations on the love and the hate of war, on fear and the ambivalent discord warfare can create in the hearts of decent men are amongst the most eloquent I have read in modern literature * New York Review of Books *Superb. At times it is hard to remember that this is not a novel * New Statesman *This was that war’s first big book by a veteran and still the best – Colin Smith * The Week *A classic * Guardian *A singular and marvellous work – a soldier’s-eye account that tells us, as no other book that I can think of has done, what it was actually like to be fighting in this hellish jungle * New York Times *Unparalleled in its honesty, unapologetic in its candour and singular in its insights into the minds and hearts of men in combat, this book is as powerful to read today as the day it was published in 1977. Caputo has more than earned his place beside Sassoon, Owen, Vonnegut, and Heller – Kevin Powers

Mustered out of the Marine Corps in 1967, Philip Caputo went on to a prize-winning career as a journalist, covering the war in Beirut and the fall of Saigon before leaving the Chicago Tribune to devote himself to writing full-time. His novels are Horn of Africa, DelCorso’s Gallery, Indian Country and Equation for Evil. He is also the author of a collection of novellas, Exiles, and a second volume of memoir, Means of Escape. Philip Caputo has been a contributing editor for Esquire, and has also written for the New York Times, the Boston Globe and the Los Angeles Times.

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