Spoils - Softcover

"Brian Van Reet's beautiful, intense, and at times disturbing novel Spoils traces the motivations and desires of combatants on both sides of the Iraq War, showing us what happens when increasing violence and chaos start to warp the choices they're able to make."--Phil Klay, author of Redeployment

"With Spoils Brian Van Reet has given readers an intensely moving novel. That it is also a nearly comprehensive examination of our modern wars is a remarkable demonstration of both the power and relevance of fiction."--Kevin Powers, author of The Yellow Birds

"The brilliance of Brian Van Reet's Spoils lies not only in the sheer forward-motion velocity of its plotting, but in the psychological terrain it explores: what a generation of young women and men went looking for in Iraq, what they found, and why that discovery matters so profoundly for the rest of us."
--Anthony Giardina, author of Norumbega Park


"Clear, authentic and beautifully written, Spoils is a book about war for people who don't like books about war. Van Reet gives us a thriller that is not a thriller, but a grave and fierce description of the moral battlefield behind the headlines from Iraq."
--Anne Enright, author of The Green Road and The Gathering


"In straightforward, often powerful prose, Van Reet captures the Iraq War as Tim O'Brien did Vietnam.... Cassandra's captivity is the focus of much of the novel, and Van Reet captures her experience vividly and terrifyingly. Seeing the conflict through a woman's eyes is a compelling approach and deserves attention."--Booklist

"Spoils is not just the well-described ambiance of the sand, heat, rains and stench of war, with its course soldier talk and extravagant weaponry--it's also a damn fine story.... In every war, heroism is not just for those who win medals. Spoils is the story of those who rise to small acts of valor while no one is looking."
--Shelf Awareness


"In his debut novel, Brian Van Reet sets his characters on a collision course amidst the chaos of the early stages of the Iraq War.... As the story unfolds, flesh and convictions are pitted against each other, drawing blood with every inch surrendered.... At its core, Spoils is a narrative of intertwining struggles, with each character bound and trapped by the Iraq War in one way or another. The storytelling is both intense and surreal.... In time, Van Reet's Spoils may become a classic of the Iraq War."
--Foreign Policy


"A wondrously nuanced book.... There is something deeply human here--a story concerned first and foremost with the souls of those who find themselves protagonists in history's darkest chapters."
--Omar El Akkad, author of American War


"Moving immediately into the pantheon of first-rate war novels, Spoils reads like a nightmare within a tragedy, a story that is both touchingly classic and brutally modern. This is a definitive record of the war that marked the end of the American Empire. One of the best novels of our time in the Middle East."--Philipp Meyer, author of The Son and American Rust

"I read this with awe. Spoils is a harrowing and incredibly powerful debut which shows war in all its complexity and viciousness and which attempts to humanize it through extraordinary and conflicted characters. The female soldier Cassandra Wigheard is superbly drawn and her relationship with the young Jihadist will stay with me for a long time."
--Kate Atkinson, bestselling author of A God in Ruins

Brian Van Reet was born in Houston. Following the September 11th attacks, he left the University of Virginia, where he was an Echols Scholar, and enlisted in the U.S. Army as a tank crewman. He served in Iraq under stop-loss orders, achieved the rank of sergeant, and was awarded a Bronze Star for valor. He has twice won the Texas Institute of Letters short story award. This is his first novel.