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    Green on Blue
    Green on Blue
    Green on Blue
    Audiobook8 hours

    Green on Blue

    Written by Elliot Ackerman

    Narrated by Piter Marek

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    "From a decorated veteran of the Iraq and Afghan Wars, and White House Fellow, a stirring debut novel about a young Afghan orphan and the harrowing, intractable nature of war.

    Aziz and his older brother Ali are coming of age in a village amid the pine forests and endless mountains of eastern Afghanistan. There is no school, but their mother teaches them to read and write, and once a month sends the boys on a two-day journey to the bazaar. They are poor, but inside their mud-walled home, the family has stability, love, and routine.

    When a convoy of armed men arrives in their village one day, their world crumbles. The boys survive and make their way to a small city, where they sleep among other orphans. They learn to beg, and, eventually, they earn work and trust from the local shopkeepers. Ali saves their money and sends Aziz to school at the madrassa, but when US forces invade the country, militants strike back. A bomb explodes in the market, and Ali is brutally injured.

    In the hospital, Aziz meets an Afghan wearing an American uniform. To save his brother, Aziz must join the Special Lashkar, a US-funded militia. No longer a boy, but not yet a man, he departs for the untamed border. Trapped in a conflict both savage and entirely 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 comes to love—in jeopardy?

    Having served five tours of duty in Afghanistan and Iraq, Elliot Ackerman has written a gripping, morally complex debut novel, an astonishing feat of empathy and imagination about boys caught in a deadly conflict."
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateFeb 17, 2015
    ISBN9781490676616
    Green on Blue
    Author

    Elliot Ackerman

    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.

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    Reviews for Green on Blue

    3.5/5

    51 ratings10 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Green on Blue tells the story of Aziz, a boy growing up in Afghanistan who changes from an innocent child to a man who vows to look after his older brother after their family is killed and he is wounded.

      Go through the chaos, fear and heartbreak with Aziz while he gets his revenge.
    • 5/5
      (Fiction, Contemporary, Afghanistan War)Due to circumstances, young Afghani teen 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.”Ackerman brilliantly sets up the hopelessness of living in war, and he has us cheering on the protagonist in his concluding decision.Well-written, riveting, and hard-hitting.4½ stars
    • 5/5
      This story is written from the perspective of a boy, Aziz, caught up in war in Afghanistan. The author is American and has been in war in the middle east, so it's an unusual perspective that shows how war affects people on the other side on a personal level -- how it can change things so much that every option available is a bad one. It forces people to make impossible choices. The words make vivid pictures of the scenes and situations, poverty, despair, and thin threads that connect people.

      How can ordinary people in any country tell who is bad, good, right, wrong? So many gray areas and complexities to consider. Every action affects someone.

      This book came to me from Goodreads Giveaways, and I'm glad it did. It's the kind of book I enjoy and will remember. It's timeless.
    • 5/5
      Comparable to Vietnam's "The Things They Carried" - this is a novel of the war in Afghanistan, in the voice of a reluctant combatant. The author served 5 tour of duty in George Bush's wars and tells the tale of Aziz, who, with his older brother Ali, watches as his parents are murdered by Gazan's forces, a Taliban offshoot group, in an attack on their village. The boys make their way to a small city where they scratch out a living from an abandoned wheelbarrow. But soon enough there's another attack from the same group and Ali loses a leg and his genitals. Aziz is recruited to become a Special Lashkar soldier and to get his badal (revenge) in an anti-Taliban unit led by Sabir. His service also pays for Ali's hospital care. There are as many frightening friends as there are enemies. There's Mr. Jack, the American, who names Sabir's squads "Tomahawk" and "Comanche"; the wealthy villager Atal, who plays one group against the other; the kind grandfatherly Mumtaz, one of the spingaris, or village elders, who try to keep the residents safe by placating all the outsiders. Aziz is an unwitting victim at first but learns very quickly of the treachery from all sides. He is a heroic figure in a country overrun with vengeful ghosts. This is an excellent novel.Quotes: "Badal should resolve an injustice, not continue it. But that is our way. There will always be angry men ready to kill each other.""All are caught up in this. The question is whether you'll be a victim or prosper in it."
    • 2/5
      **I received a copy of this book through a Goodreads giveaway.**

      This is a story of two brothers in Afghanistan after their parents are murdered in a militant strike.

      It's not a very moving story but it is a story.

      I felt as though I was reading a book report on a series of events rather than reading a story about two brothers.

      There isn't much character development. A lot of characters are introduced quickly & without details that would give the reader a sense of the characters' personalities.
      As a result I didn't really care about the brothers or the choices that Aziz is forced to make throughout the book.

      Most of the decisions made by characters in this book are made based on revenge. The characters are so driven by revenge that I expected to feel more invested.
      Revenge is such a strong emotion that it must to be explained & described in detail to assist the reader with feeling it along with the character rather than simply stated.

      There are quite a few instances where the book simply states "Character A killed character B's brother/son/cousin/dad and as a result character A must take revenge in order to restore the family pride."

      Perhaps the reader would feel more invested if the writer had provided more background information related to the events that inspired such strong vengeful feelings & led each individual to join the US funded militia or the rival Afghan groups.

      The book attempts to portray the conflicts of interest found in US funded militias in Afghanistan but they are portrayed at a very basic level.
      The book explains that if all sides in a war prosper then the war will never end. There are clear examples of this for each of the groups (the Taliban, the US funded militia & the mountain village).

      The book doesn't touch on the religious extremism or other reasons such as the decades of wars that have been occurring in Afghanistan that are also factors in the war in Afghanistan. To not address the myriad of other contributing factors leaves the reader with the simplistic impression that the individuals are solely driven by revenge, poverty and/or how their group may prosper from the war.


      It's not a horrible book...it's just not a fantastic book.


    • 3/5
      This short book - 236 pages - give depressing view of our no-win strategy in "winning freedom" for third world countries. The setting seems to be Iraq but it might as well be Viet Nam. The ambiguities of shifting loyalties are seen through one soldier Aziz who gets involved to avenge his brother's severe injuries after there town in bombed. He's recruited by "the Americans" promising to give care to his brother. He finally realizes the symbiosis amone Garzon, the "enemy" leader, Aziz's commander Sabir, and "the Americans" whose only intent is to keep the war going for their own benefit.Aziz gets his revenge, stays alive, but has no choice but to lose his soul.
    • 5/5
      So sad. I think we all know how futile war is and can be and yet wars continue. You feel so sad for the people who are faced with the daily conflict on their soil in their villages and not something remote happening in another country.
    • 3/5
      GREEN ON BLUE, by Elliott Ackerman.In the past dozen or so years there has been a literal landslide of books, both fiction and non-fiction, coming out of the current wars in the Middle East, and many of them have been penned by its returning veterans. I have read at least a couple dozen of them, some very good, some not so good; but I have nothing but the utmost respect for what these men - and some women too - have endured in the service of our country.Elliot Ackerman has survived several combat tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and currently works as a war correspondent based out of Istanbul. With his first book, GREEN ON BLUE, Ackerman has attempted something very different from most of the current crop of war books. His novel is told from the point of view of "the other," in this case, an Afghan. His fictional narrator, Aziz, is a young Afghan soldier in a special militia, drawn deviously into a war where the enemy keeps shifting sides. The story is told entirely in his words; there is no other point of view. He gives us a stark portrait of a culture characterized by blood feuds and revenge in a country beaten down by decades of continuous war. Aziz and his brother Ali, orphaned by war, belong to a generation that has never known anything but war, bloodshed and betrayals. This much is clear: things will not end well.After reading several glowing reviews and complimentary blurbs from a number of very impressive sources, many of them writers whose books I have very much enjoyed, I was eager to read GREEN ON BLUE. So I am reluctant to be the lone naysayer on the merits of the book. Because I wanted so much to like this book. I didn't. Perhaps it's because I am most drawn to character-driven novels. And the characters here, Aziz included, are far too sketchily drawn for a reader to really develop any sense of empathy. So I guess that leaves us with a plot-driven novel, which this seems to be. Unfortunately the plot here lumbers along at a near-glacial pace, often slowed even more by irrelevant filler material. The writing ranges from workmanlike to wooden, and is hampered further by awkward metaphors and similes which add little to the story and often left me wincing in embarrassment. Alternately, I was fighting just to stay awake while trying to read this book. The premise here is a good one. Showing the sad reality of a war-ravaged country and a once proud people whose main business now is war; and how loyalty - or what passes for it - more often than not goes to the highest bidder. That story has already been told - and told well - by Anand Gopal's excellent non-fiction account, NO GOOD MEN AMONG THE LIVING. As for a fictional look at the other side in the current war in Afghanistan, Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya's beautifully written novel, THE WATCH, offers perhaps the best example yet. This book? I'm sorry, but it was a struggle just to finish it. (two and three-quarter stars)
    • 5/5
      This book was very well-written and vivid, but it was not my type of book.
    • 4/5
      I received a free copy of this book from the publisher through Netgalley. I must admit that it took me an unusually long time to read this book, and that I got stalled in the middle. But it was well worth the read. Ackerman has written a very compassionate book depicting the stark and brutal reality of the Afghan people -- especially young men -- caught in an endless war. Written from the perspective of a young Afghan man, Ackerman portrays a war that has very little to do with principle but rather in which people's actions are fuelled by necessity and a culture of revenge. While the story is focused on the narrator and other Afghanis, to the extent that the role of Americans is touched on, they are primarily shown as hapless and interfering. There is the obvious issue of a book written by a North American author from the perspective of an Afghani, but Ackerman who spent a lot of time in Afghanistan seems to bring a lot of knowledge, sensitivity and compassion to the subject. It will be interesting to see the reaction once the book is published early next year. For my part, I am grateful that I had a chance to read this book even though it was hard to read at times and doesn't give much scope for optimism. Kudos to Ackerman for taking on this difficult project and for doing it so well.