Classical ideas of human dignity and honour are juxtaposed with the squalor of modern war in this important novel... A beautiful and heartfelt lamentation

His lyrical prose captures superbly the brutal realities of combat

Scorching, tightly wired... It's a reminder that blood fueds are as old as humanity itself

Written with restrained power

The first great novel of the war in Afghanistan

We watch as the resistance of an isolated American garrison in Afghanistan is ground down, not by force of arms but by the will of a single unarmed woman, holding inflexibly to an idea of what is just and right.

An important book for our times, in which one woman's determination and refusal to consent set an example of courage and honesty.

The Watch is a powerful tale, courageous both in concept and creation: an ancient tale made modern, passed through different narrators in extraordinary shape-shifting prose that makes this not just an important novel, but a remarkable read.

A poignant and important book about one of the defining events of the start of the 21st century; it is devastatingly eloquent and unequivocal about the fact that there is no glory or beauty in war.

A tense, edgy, gripping, important work.

Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya is my hero among my fellow writers. In a world in which an 'identity kit' is something like a toothbrush - that is, something one cannot do without - he has chosen the most difficult way. He has jettisoned his 'identity kit' in the name of freedom of literary choice, in the name of the freedom of literature.

Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya's lyrical and poignant evocation of war is a potent reminder of the murderous futility of our imperial adventures in the Middle East. He captures the raw brutality of industrial warfare, along with its trauma, senselessness, random death and stupidity. His characters, including the soldiers who prosecute the war and the innocents whose lives are maimed and destroyed by it, are consumed alike in the vast orgy of death that sweeps across war zones to extinguish all that is human -- tenderness, compassion,understanding and finally love. He forces us to face the evil we do to others and to ourselves.

Ours is a time of enduring conflict ... As a soldier and veteran, I want my countrymen and women to understand what they continue to ask their military to endure ... As a person, I want us to remember our common humanity. The Watch confronts all of these without apology ... I applaud it.

A captivating read

This delightful, readable, believable and useful book made me furious!

[Fobbit] is] like an Office-style satire that happens to be set on a military base in an active war zone

Abrams is...convincing... Fobbit is a vicious skewering of this surprisingly large military subculture of war avoidance

A unique behind-the-wire glimpse at life in the FOB and the process of “spinning” a war for public consumption. A funny, hard-edged satire about recent history and modern war-making

Sardonic and poignant. Funny and bitter. Ribald and profane

You might not expect an Iraq War novel to be funny, but I laughed—more than once—as I read this one. I cringed, too. There’s simply so much to this book

Truly significant... a book about the absurdity of the way the war is fought, the way the war is projected back home, and the massive gulf between the two...a cynical satire in the same vein as the best works of legendary wartime authors like Evelyn Waugh, Kingsley Amis, Kurt Vonnegut, and especially Joseph Heller.

Fobbit is two things in one – a scathing, deeply felt diatribe against military disasters large and small, and an often-hilarious examination of very human, very weak characters living next door to a combat zone. The good news is that you only have to buy one copy, and you should waste no time in doing so

Fobbit should be required reading for America. Hilarious and tragic, it’s as if Louis C.K. and Lewis Black provided commentary to The Hurt Locker. There will be innumerable comparisons to Catch-22, but Fobbit, believe me, stands on its own

Funny and evocative, with great glimpses of soldier-speak and deployment day to day life, each laugh in the novel is accompanied with a troubling insight into the different types of battles that our soldiers encounter on a non-traditional battlefield

The author describes Fobbit as an ‘anti-stupidity’ novel, not an anti-war novel, and with 20 years’ service he has the evidence and flair to write the former... Fobbit is bliss

Abrams shows these men and women in their natural habitats, stuck somewhere halfway between the actual violence of war and the goofy excess of American culture

The insanity is linguistic, and Abrams’s dark humor about lying through language would appeal to George Orwell... Fobbit invites us to laugh over our collective foolishness—foolishness that sometimes includes deaths. That’s the toughest, most painful laughter of all

“[Fobbit] gives such full-blooded life to the soldiers whose “pale, gooey center” is so antithetical to battlefield heroism that he propels the word into the everyday by the force of his narrative

Abram's tale is powerful stuff

If Vonnegut and Heller were the undisputed chroniclers of the madness of World War II, Abrams should be considered the resounding new voice of the Iraq War

[As] dark as it is funny, which is to say considerably... [Abrams has] written a book that makes you laugh and makes you wince, often at the same time, all the while staying true to its message: that people are foolish on many levels, sometimes fatally so, but they are all motivated by the same basic needs, desires, and fears...There are no heroes here, but no villains either. Each character fights his own war, and nobody wins

[Abrams is] good on the squirm-inducing detail of physical discomforts and injuries

Though Fobbit is a satire…its value lies more in the fact that it’s a very detailed, very informative portrait of the madness in Iraq in the early years of the American occupation. The sights and sounds are adroitly rendered, the damnable heat skilfully rendered in text. There are times when you can almost smell the gore on the concrete

An enjoyable and alternative take on war