Matterhorn

Featured in PBS's The Vietnam War series by Ken Burns & Lynn Novick. The New York Times bestselling, powerhouse (TIME Magazine) debut from Vietnam War veteran, Karl Marlantes. An incredible publishing story--written over the course of thirty years by a highly decorated Vietnam veteran, a New York Times best seller for sixteen weeks, a National Indie Next and a USA Today best seller--Matterhorn has been hailed as a "brilliant account of war" (New York Times Book Review). Now out in paperback, 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. 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. I wouldn't be surprised if Matterhorn becomes for the Vietnam War what All Quiet on the Western Front was to World War I. -James Patterson

Here is storytelling so authentic, so moving and so intense, and so intense, and so relentlessly dramatic, that there were times I wasn't sure I could stand to turn the page. ... There has never been a more realistic portrait or eloquent tribute to the nobility of men under fire. -Mark Bowden, author of Black Hawk Down I wouldn't be surprised if Matterhorn becomes for the Vietnam War what All Quiet on the Western Front was to World War I. -James Patterson One of the most profound and devastating novels to come out of Vietnam - or any war. -Sebastian Junger I've laughed at Catch-22 and wept at The Thin Red Line, but I've never encountered a war novel as stark, honest, and wrenching as Matterhorn. ... I found it nearly impossible to stop reading. -Michael Schaub, NPR Unforgettable ... A beautifully crafted novel of unrivaled authenticity and power, filled with jungle heroism, crackerjack inventiveness, mud, blood, brotherhood, hatred, healing, terror, bureaucracy, politics, unfathmomable waste, and unfathomable love. -Christina Robb A powerhouse: tense, brutal, honest. -TIME

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 valor, two Purple Hearts, and ten air medals. He is the author of Matterhorn and What It Is Like to Go to War. He lives in rural Washington.