Fobbit by David Abrams

Fobbit

David Abrams

Stationed in Iraq, at a heavily fortified military camp in the middle of a war zone, our main protagonist is engaged in constant rewrites with a positive spin on casualty reports, for press releases in the USA. This harrowing satire graphically conveys all the absurdity and soul-destroying nature of the cynical bureaucracy surrounding modern warfare, where gallows humour is the only defence against madness and truth is always the first casualty.

Extract
The half-dead man came to life. He coughed and a rope of blood spurted from his lips. The whir and grrr of the robot had roused him from his stupor and now he was agitated, taking it out on the robot, which stared back at him without blinking despite the curses the terrorist hurled at it. The robot could care less if he burned in hell with the rest of his Yankee infidel lovers or if he had his privates sliced off with a dull, rusty knife and shoved down his throat - and, frankly, whether or not the Great Satan, George W.Bush, ever had relations with his mother doggy-style really didn't register in his circuitry.
Parallels
  • Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
  • Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain
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Violence
Explicit sexual Content