This passage from Two Pumps for the Body Man is the one I consistently turn to when looking for an excerpt to read at book talks. In the wake of recent events, it feels more prescient today than when I first wrote it at the height of the “War on Terror.”

From Chapter 28

Mutton took leave, eventually, because he had to. Nobody would have understood had he chosen to stay behind. But service on the front line in the war on terror had produced in him a craving for misery and pain, an agony not unlike the long, weeping remorse that led to his divorce and his desire to sniff the feet of Vanna Lavinia… Read on