Green on Blue: A Novel

Elliot Ackerman

Feb 2015 · Sold by Simon and Schuster

About this ebook

From the author of Waiting for Eden and the National Book Award Finalist Dark at the Crossing, a “compassionate, provocative, and alive” (Vogue.com) debut war story about a young Afghan orphan, “Green on Blue is harrowing, brutal, and utterly absorbing. With spare prose, Ackerman has spun a morally complex tale of revenge, loyalty, and brotherly love” (Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner).

Aziz and his older brother Ali are coming of age in a village amid the pine forests and endless mountains of eastern Afghanistan. They are poor, but inside their mud-walled home, the family has stability, love, and routine. One day a convoy of armed men arrives in their village and their world crumbles. The boys survive and make their way to a small city, where they gradually begin to piece together their lives. But when US forces invade the country, militants strike back. A bomb explodes in the market, and Ali is brutally injured.

To save his brother, Aziz must join the Special Lashkar, a US-funded militia. As he rises through the ranks, Aziz becomes mired in the dark underpinnings of his country’s war, witnessing clashes between rival Afghan groups—what US soldiers call “green on green” attacks—and those on US forces by Afghan soldiers, violence known as “green on blue.” Trapped in a conflict both savage and contrived, Aziz struggles to understand his place. Will he embrace the brutality of war or leave it behind, and risk placing his brother—and a young woman he has come to love—in jeopardy?

Green on Blue has broken new ground in the literature of our most recent wars, accomplishing an astonishing feat of empathy and imagination. Writing from the Afghan perspective, “Elliot Ackerman has done something brave as a writer and even braver as a soldier: He has touched, for real, the culture and soul of his enemy” (The New York Times Book Review).

Ratings and reviews

Preface to my review: I am currently enlisted in the military and read this book during a deployment My opinion may be bias. Ackerman's look into the life of a fictional, orphaned Afghan boy named Aziz. The novel provides readers an uncomfortable look into the reality of war. Aziz learns what it takes to be a man when he must take care of his older brother following an attack on his village. When given the opportunity to work in a small militia force that was assembled to fight the men that attacked his village and injured his brother, Aziz learns that war is not always black and white. Throughout the course of the novel, we see the thought process and life events that lead to an event that is all too common to US Servicemen and women: a Blue on Green attack. I really enjoyed the novel and believe it will be an enjoyable read to anyone in the military or one that enjoys military fiction.

Green on Blue

About the author

Elliot Ackerman served five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan and is the recipient of the Silver Star, the Bronze Star for Valor, and the Purple Heart. A former White House Fellow, his essays and fiction have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New Republic, and Ecotone, among others. He currently lives in Istanbul where he writes on the Syrian Civil War. Green on Blue is his first novel.