The million-copy bestseller, which is a ground-breaking meditation on war, memory, imagination, and the redemptive power of storytelling. ‘The Things They Carried’ is, on its surface, a sequence of award-winning stories about the madness of the Vietnam War; at the same time it has the cumulative power and unity of a novel, with recurring characters and interwoven strands of plot and theme. But while Vietnam is central to ‘The Things They Carried’, it is not simply a book about war. It is also a book about the human heart – about the terrible weight of those things we carry through our lives. Product description Review ‘One of the best war books of this century, an unflinching attempt to illuminate both its obscene physical brutality and the terrible mental overload’ Guardian ‘A thrilling and beautiful distillation of everything that has been thought, felt, or said about the Vietnam War and its long afterburn. A heartbreaking and healing masterpiece; time will make it a classic’ Michael Herr, author of Dispatches ‘Essential…O’Brien captures the war’s pulsating rhythms and nerve-racking dangers…a stunning performance. The overall effect of these original tales is devastating’ New York Times About the Author Tim O’Brien was born in Minnesota and graduated from Macalester College in St Paul. He established himself as one of the leading writers of his generation in 1973 when he published ‘If I Die In A Combat Zone’, the compelling account of his own tour of duty in Vietnam, and is widely regarded as the finest novelist the Vietnam War has produced.