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Matterhorn

Karl Marlantes

201016 pagesabout 15–20 minutes
2010
first published
  • 2010Atlantic Monthly Press · ENGISBN 9780802119285
  • 2010Atlantic Monthly Press · ENGISBN 9780802165138
  • 2010Atlantic Books, Limited · 300 pages · ENGISBN 9780857890559
  • 2010Atlantic Monthly · 598 pages · ENGISBN 9780802119667
  • 2011Grove/Atlantic · 608 pages · ENGISBN 9780802145314
  • 2010Blackstone Audiobooks · 16 pages · ENGISBN 9781441742308

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.

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