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20 March 2014updated 28 Jun 2021 4:45am

Iraq and ruin: two fictional examinations of life after war

Two new American novels about physically and psychologically damaged veterans from the Iraq war get inside their subjects’ heads with varying success, writes a former US marine.

By Phil Klay

The Free 
Willy Vlautin
Faber & Faber, 288p, £12.99

Carthage 
Joyce Carol Oates
Fourth Estate, 400pp, £14.99

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