Monday, February 14, 2011

MATTERHORN wins the Colby prize!

From the ever-useful ShelfAwareness email (if you don't subscribe to their daily email, you're pretty much a total idiot really shortchanging yourself) comes this welcome news:

Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes has won the 2011 William E. Colby Award, which honors "a first work of fiction or non-fiction that has made a significant contribution to the public's understanding of intelligence operations, military history, or international affairs."

Named for the late ambassador and CIA director, the $5,000 award will be presented by Tawani Foundation in association with the Pritzker Military Library on October 22 in Chicago at the Library's 2011 Liberty Gala.

Colby Award co-founder and author W.E.B. Griffin called Matterhorn "a powerful first work that defines the tragic cost of the Vietnam War in human terms. Marlantes' breakneck writing style is both passionate and haunting, thrusting the reader into alternating moments of chaos and courage reflecting the fragility of our Marines on the ground--and their leadership--in combat."

I'm a devoted fan of MATTERHORN; it was on my very short list of books that knocked my sox off in 2010.

2 comments:

Laura M. Campbell said...

I'm not the first person to grab a book on the military, but just from the description alone I'm curious. I'll have to check it out. Thanks for the post.

Elspeth Futcher said...

It was a tweet from you that led me to MATTERHORN. It is an astounding book.