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And while you’re looking for your next great read, please don’t overlook our brand new Biography and Memoir Book of the Month!
CONTACT
by AFN CLARKE
This new edition of AFN Clarke’s best selling and controversial book CONTACT is a raw, visceral, “no-holds-barred” account of what it’s like to be in combat. When it was first published it caused a furor for its devastating honesty and chilling revelations of one of the men we pay to kill. Clarke vividly recounts his experiences of two tours in Northern Ireland (in Belfast and Crossmaglen) as a Platoon Commander with Britain’s elite Parachute Regiment during the blood soaked 1970’s. The dangers, political agendas and religious roots underlying the conflict are eerily and heartbreakingly similar to Iraq, and Afghanistan today.
The enemy wears no uniform and shoots from the shadows and the bomber’s trip-wire is an ever-present nightmare. This is the worst kind of war, the kind of war that is virtually unwinnable. A war that nobody admits is a war at all.
CONTACT makes disconcerting reading. The Truth of war is like that. We want to look but we don’t want to see. Clarke makes us see: we feel what it’s like to live each day with our senses on high alert knowing that at any moment we can be ripped apart by the accuracy of a sniper or a well-hidden bomb; we learn the private thoughts and attitudes of trained soldiers operating in conditions of extreme stress, fatigue and squalor, ordered to hold the lines in an ancient quarrel they have little affinity for, but whose consequences are deadly.
CONTACT was first published in the UK in 1983 by Martin Secker & Warburg, was serialized for 5 days in The Mirror, a national newspaper, and became an instant best seller. In 1984 it was published in paperback by PAN Books, by Schocken Books New York and made into a BBC TV film that won the Locarno Film Festival top award for best TV film.
The print edition ends when Clarke was taken to hospital from Crossmaglen. This new eBook version reveals the untold story of the nightmare he lived through, up to his medical discharge a year later.
Book length 69,237 words.
“…the best account we have had of what it is like to serve in Northern Ireland…” Richard West, The Times Literary Supplement.
” … it is impossible to turn its pages without a profound sense of shock”. David Hewson, The Times.
” …. an unashamedly personal account … a fascinating view of fighting a war from a perspective which we may very rarely experience or hear about.” Michael Keene, Irish Evening Press.
“Captain Clarke is more than a serving solder, he is a writer of distinction.” Jack Gerson, Glasgow Sunday Standard.
“… its honesty and passion cannot be denied ….. Mr. Clarke has sent out a powerful and disturbing early warning signal.” Maurice Leitch, Daily Telegraph.
“The most telling and realistic soldier’s account to come out of the whole sorry mess. The emotions are as vivid as the events. Anger and frustration tinge every page.” Daily Mirror.
From The Author
CONTACT was the first book I ever wrote and had published. After 8 years of active service I left the army as a young man having nearly died, with half my guts missing and endless surgeries to look forward to, trying to rebuild a life with my wife and children. PTSD was not something talked about then, but looking back it’s clear that in some small way, Contact was my “therapy”, my way of releasing and communicating those raw experiences and emotions. I wrote it for myself, something I was driven to do. I had no idea that my mother would find the manuscript in the bedside drawer when she came to visit and stay up all night reading it. I thought it would embarrass and shock her. Instead, she became my greatest fan and supporter, urging me to get it published at any cost.
I am so grateful to her. Though it caused a lot of controversy and throughout my life has kept drawing me back into the issues of war and conflict that I would rather forget, the most humbling and satisfying experiences were when mothers and fathers of young soldiers wrote to tell me how grateful they were for the book. For giving them an understanding of what it must have been like for their sons who came home changed by the experience. And for providing some hope that through this understanding they might be better equipped to help their sons rebuild their lives and bridge the gap that had suddenly appeared as a result of their changed realities. They just wanted their boys back. What is most distressing is that the experience of the parents back then, is still much the same today.
What happens in war and as a result of war has far reaching consequences, both for the soldiers that fight it, their families, and the country that sends them to war in the first place. And I think what pains me the most is that we don’t seem to learn from the past. We continue to get embroiled in ancient quarrels, in religious based conflict, in power struggles for resources and we continue to repeat the same mistakes leaving broken bodies, broken lives, and broken hearts.
I just hope that one day we can see life through different eyes, value it for the precious gift that it is, and enjoy and share the beauty and abundance of our great planet rather than engage in petty squabbles about ownership of it.
I think that’s why I never stopped writing after CONTACT – to keep challenging old thinking, make people think, make people laugh, and keep creating a different way of seeing and understanding the world.
(This is a sponsored post.)