Missionaries: A Novel

Phil Klay’s landmark novel Missionaries offers haunting glimpses into the implementation of modern war in regions as distant from one another as those of Iraq and Afghanistan to those of Colombia and Venezuela. His equally engrossing and profound narrative weaves together four storylines with an array of individuals from those who have decision-making influence to initiative war, to those who cover and report the chaos of war, to those who fight on the frontlines of war, and to those who suffer and become the victims of the unrestrained violence of war.We see Abel, a Colombian native, as he suffers terrible loss in his country’s rural towns and how he then becomes a combatant in a militia before trying to redirect his life towards normalcy. We see Lisette, a daring reporter, as she delivers up correspondence in Afghanistan before she sets her journalistic sights on Colombia’s villages and towns ravished by the narco and drug lords. We see Mason, an Army medic, as he endures the rigors of combat, and then we see him as a veteran working for the U.S. government as a consultant to the Colombian military. And we see Juan Pablo, a lieutenant colonel in the Colombian special forces, and how he is responsible for tracking down narco targets and strategizing operations.Klay had me invested in the lives of each of these major characters, and he does a remarkable job at giving us access to their struggles. We experience their range of emotions from fear to courage, from grief to hope, and we share in the most traumatic and intimate of their experiences. In addition, the scope of Klay’s narrative does not cling exclusively to the major players. He allows us to feel the dread and despair of civilians in vulnerable locales from the Middle East to South America. He likewise offers insight into the minds of the characters as they become more and more entwined in the madness of modern warfare. Moreover, Klay has the ability to provide a frightening window into the cold-blooded desensitization of criminals and terrorists as they carry out unspeakable acts of cruelty for revenge, power, money, and sometimes for no specific reason, except that they can.The epic nature of Klay’s novel is rife with psychological details and philosophical passages, but he skillfully maintains a constant degree of suspense that had my blood chilled as the storylines inched forward to where the four major characters’ paths began to intersect. Missionaries is an essential novel for understanding our wanton era, and Klay bears witness to scenes of unflinching brutality and carnage, but mostly he offers an intense look at the modern world’s struggles against acts of inhumanity. In giving us the authenticity of war from multiple viewpoints, Klay enables us to see who we are and where we are headed in our unfolding history of violence.After winning the National Book Award for his debut story collection Redeployment, I hope Missionaries also receives significant attention from the Pulitzer, Booker, and other award committees. Klay’s novel is the most original and ingenious piece of fiction I’ve read since Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer in 2015, and it’s just as spectacular and engaging in its epic breadth as Julie Orringer’s The Flight Portfolio from 2019. I can hardly wait to see where Klay’s vision takes him with his next project.

War novels of the past have dwelt largely on the "war is hell" theme, the ability of combatants to endure the stresses of wartime savagery and, in prevailing there, to add some measure of maturity to that gained by achieving adulthood at home. But what of the late 20th century and early 21st century and their wars of attrition? This is Klay's literary palate in Missionaries.Before I go with that, however, it's worth noting that his novel spreads itself awfully thin over more than its first half. I have to attribute that to, as he writes in his Acknowledgements, "This book would not exist without the efforts of so many people." It's absolutely beneficial to have more than one set of discerning eyes on a manuscript, but too many accommodated sets of perspectives can take away a novel's focus. It's only on page 236 (of 404) that the author's project emerges from the fog of antiterrorist war in Iraq and Afghanistan and narco war in Colombia:"...she did know Colombia, because she knew Iraq and Afghanistan. That this was an extension of the same war, not the endless war on "terror" but something vaguer, harder to pin down and related to the demands of America's not-quite-empire which was always projecting military power across the globe and just shifting the rationale of why. The Cold War communist guerrillas became War on Drugs narcoguerrillas became War on Terror narcoterrorists. That you keep seeing the same policies or strategies or even people bouncing around the globe."The "she" above is a journalist, Lisette Marigny, who, bored with the predictability of winding down wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, seeks, out of curiosity a story in the narco wars of Central America, principally Colombia. The other players here are Liz's lover/friend, Diego, a former U.S. soldier remaining near the action, Mason, a Special Forces medic who drifts toward the narco action, Abel, a young Colombian drawn into the violent narco trade under the tutelage of the older, more experienced Jefferson, and Juan Pablo, a Colombian Special Forces colonel trained in the U.S.This isn't a good project for a first novel, but the political implications of it are compelling. Klay's difficulty is in committing his project to story amid the many layers of complexity such political intrigues possess. And, in the end, he finds it difficult to conclude his story. His denouement is some 30 pages long, but I find myself forgiving the reach of his strategy, based of a few more quotes:From Juan Pablo, now in the Middle East: "Who is on our side? In our operations center, we've got Americans and Israelis and Emiratis and one Colombian. We've got resupply from the United States, arms from half the globe, and if you look closely, see who is supporting this war, directly or indirectly, you will find that what sits behind us is the entire civilized world. And on the other side, we have men and women raised in tents, in a debased culture of rituals and poverty and sacred texts that half of them are too illiterate to read, sending out suicide bombers and laying land mines that will maim and kill for generations, and for what?...I am on the side of civilization against primitive nonsense."From rather innocent bit player, Jeffie: "Were they as motivated by primitivism as he (Juan Pablo) thought? Was this war of attrition they were fighting grinding down their resistance, or would it spawn pockets of resistance, deep enmities, nonnegotiable hatred? What were they like? He didn't know. It wasn't necessary to know for a campaign like this, which was one-half war and one-half extermination."Juan Pablo again: "Perhaps this was the future of war, and if so, good. In a war like this, it did not matter how many fanatics swarmed to your side. It did not matter if you stirred the passions of the people by demonizing the government...what mattered was the global, interconnected system that generated the wealth and the technology that would ultimately determine the fate of this war, and the wars to come. That system <em>was</em> civilization. It was progress."Wars of the twentieth century were largely fought over, if not underlain by, ideology. The U.S.'s foreign policy, and its current extensions, as implied within Klay's work here, have been the naive belief that by doing little more than undercutting monarchs, dictators, and faux-democracies, we could establish a network of nations around the world that would banish war and human suffering. But then, that's the territory of politics, which is, to invert Clausewitz, war by other means. Given less impetus has been education within the variant cultures around the globe, which spawns unique and benign forms of freedom, of creativity, that eventually make for better lives globally while preserving cultural integrity. Our problem in the U.S. has been our impatience, our willingness to commit to interminable wars instead of the longer-term belief that basic human goodness will eventually win out if properly nourished.My rating: 17 of 20 stars

Phil Klay's writing has always been anchored in a love a language. His story collection Redeployment was filled with gorgeous descriptions of everything from the trauma of violence to the confusion and boredom of military bureaucracy. Missionaries, too, shines with crisp and evocative language. But its ambitions are much higher than that of Klay's previous stories, gems though they were. This novel aims to understand and convey the scope of our strange modern wars, how seemingly disparate conflicts on different continents are connected through both individual actors and the creep of ideology. It aims to probe the violence and tragedy of war with a philosophical acumen that somehow doesn't get in the way of the visceral reality of the subject. And it does so with lively characters, and a thrilling plot. You won't just enjoy this book. It will make you smarter. And if you're a writer, and you pay attention to Klay's craft, it will make you a better writer. This book is ostensibly about guerrilla wars and politics in Colombia. It's not. It's about humanity, which is revealed most in such extremes.

Mr Klay has much to say about US foreign policy and 'forever wars', but this book would have been better as a first person memoir.

A great book, writing of how wars have now become almost a necessity for keeping soldiers sharp, and feeding the insatiableand infamous Boogeyman the Military Industrial Complex. By use of the largest military in the world,the United States; who get outsourced, be it for use against Central and South American Leftish militias, and the futile war on drugs and narco-terrorism. (Remember Oliver North!???) And Klay describes this at length, how he equates the theatres of combat in Afghanistan and Iraq. He's not trying to chastize America or teach us a lesson - (Klay being an ex-marine and no doubt a patriot, just an observant one intellectually) - just to look, and decide for one's self, which is so difficult in the Fog of War, even for "civilians".This book, after a detailed look into modern military campaigns will leave you with more questions than answers. If you're a war junkie, purchase this book. If you're into incredible books, again, purchase this book. I flew through this novel, which usually means the prose is triple A grade stuff. Very difficult to pull off, even for some of our more celebrated authors. I had to keep checking this was a book of fiction, Klay's world felt so darn real; an extraordinary achievement. And as your humble critic of books bought here on Amazon, it is a term I rarely use, like the overuse of "genius". But if Klay does a repeat with his future work, maybe I'll slap a genius down on that review. SDB

It's a book so I read it, Doh! I had A1 service & an A1 product.

Good book. Reads a bit like a film! A little confusing in the end chapters. Not quite as good as his Redeployment, a stunning book.

I didn’t finish yet, but I knew the author after reading his first novel. “Missionaries” is again a very well written story in a country with an armed conflict and the ways people are affected. Very human and touching novel. And a moving tribute to so many lives. I found, until now that is also very accurate of the real situation in Colombia.

may not be to every ones taste , however . well written and a good story. cheers