The Surge

by Adam Kovac

Overview

Larry Chandler knows what his fellow soldiers don’t—that war scars you and haunts you, leaving you with memories you’d prefer not to face. They’re all National Guardsmen serving together in Iraq, but he’s already done a stint in Afghanistan, whereas they’re fresh-faced youngsters on their first tour. The new soldiers are eager for something more interesting than life on a firebase, or boring guard duty at isolated outposts—and they’re about to get their wish.

Adam Kovac has written one of the great novels of The Forever Wars—one that captures both the dust and grit and sweat of soldiers on patrol, and the surrealism of their lives back on base. (Where they might be checking Facebook and ordering lattes one minute, and dodging mortars the next.) In its first edition, it earned comparisons to the likes of Hemingway, Mailer, and O’Brien; this revised second edition promises to find it the audience it so richly deserves.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781965199046
Publisher:	Tortoise Books
Publication date:	05/20/2025
Pages:	206
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.47(d)

About the Author

Adam Kovac is an author and role-playing game developer. He served in the infantry in the U.S. Army, with deployments to Panama, Haiti, Iraq and Afghanistan, and an overseas tour in South Korea. A former journalist, he's also covered the crime and court beats for newspapers in Indiana, Florida and Illinois. Kovac earned his MFA in creative writing from Northwestern University. He lives with his wife and son in suburban Chicago.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Adam Kovac has written in The Surge a novel rare in its insight and power. There is no trumpeting of conflict or sacrifice here, no outlandish satire. Instead, Kovac faces the boredom and horror, the drudgery of a forever war, with a steady hand and gaze. Readers will come away from this book shaken, mad, stunned.”

— Eric Shonkwiler, author of Above All Men and Moon Up, Past Full

Editorial Reviews

"Adam Kovac’s The Surge gives us a pivotal time in the Iraq War, but at the most intimate of levels. This gripping, honest and moving novel shows us how grand strategies play out for regular soldiers, who in Kovac’s hands are portrayed with a vividness that brings me back to the men and women I served with."
— Phil Klay, author of Redeployment, winner of the National Book Award

"It's a small sliver in history now, but for a while there, not so long ago, the troop surge in Iraq seemed quite a significant affair, even the center of the entire world if you were there. Adam Kovac captures that strange, messy time with verve and the sort of dark truthfulness only fiction can provide. The Surge is a very fine novel that deserves wide readership."
— Matt Gallagher, author of Daybreak

“Ever since the United States has been throwing our men and women into combat in Afghanistan and Iraq, novelists have been trying to come to grips artistically with these so-called ‘forever wars.’ Onto this already-crowded shelf of war literature comes one of the best of the bunch: Adam Kovac’s The Surge. It perfectly captures the combat experience — long periods of boredom punctuated by sudden bursts of violence — in prose that never lets up in intensity.”
— David Abrams, author of Brave Deeds and Fobbit

"It is hard to imagine a soldier protagonist more apt for our time than Larry Chandler: physically and emotionally wounded, disillusioned, popping pain pills, and trying to keep raw recruits eager to prove themselves from knowing what he knows of war. In this remarkable debut, Adam Kovac has not only produced a vivid and compelling story about the reality of war, he's somehow conjured an allegory for where we are in American history."
— Naem Murr, author of The Perfect Man

"Adam Kovac has written in The Surge a novel rare in its insight and power. There is no trumpeting of conflict or sacrifice here, no outlandish satire. Instead, Kovac faces the boredom and horror, the drudgery of a forever war, with a steady hand and gaze. Readers will come away from this book shaken, mad, and stunned."
— Eric Shonkwiller, author of Above All Men and Moon Up, Past Full

From the Publisher