Going After Cacciato

Tim O’Brien was born in Minnesota and served as a foot soldier in Vietnam from 1969 to 1970, and after graduate studies at Harvard worked as a reporter for the Washington Post. When ‘If I Die in a Combat Zone’ was published in 1973, it established him as one of the leading American writers of his generation, a status that was confirmed when ‘Going After Cacciato’ won the National Book Award for fiction.

‘To call “Going After Cacciato” a novel about war is like calling Moby-Dick a novel about whales. O’Brien’s writing is crisp, authentic and grimly ironic … a major achievement’ New York Times Book Review‘Not only the best novel about the Vietnam War, but among the finest works of fiction in contemporary American literature’ Philip Caputo, Esquire‘His irony recalls that of Stendhal, his landscapes have the breadth and scope of Tolstoy’s, and the essential American innocence of his vision deserves to stand beside that of Stephen Crane’ National Book Award citation