On a paved patio outside a Mexican restaurant, two people who once frequented war zones are having salted margaritas.
Phil Klay and Bob Shacochis are in some ways very different and in some ways extremely similar. Klay, a former Marine officer, is softer-spoken than Shacochis, a former Peace Corps volunteer and war correspondent, and they come from different generations, but they are both National Book Award winners and commentators on American warfare. Shacochis’ novel The Woman Who Lost her Soul is a wartime book, set in occupied Haiti and Second World War-era eastern Europe. Klay’s works of fiction explore the seediest underbellies of war — the street dogs lapping up blood, the casual racism, the awkwardness of having sex with your wife after months away on deployment — and his essays are confronting and political, with titles like “We have no idea what we’re doing in Iraq. We didn’t before we killed Suleimani” and “Public rage won’t solve any of our problems”.
