The Knife, Ross Ritchell
The Knife, Ross Ritchell
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The Knife

Author: Ross Ritchell

Narrator: Peter Ganim

Unabridged: 7 hr 46 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 02/05/2015

Synopsis

This powerful, dark, and morally provocative debut novel about a US Special Forces unit operating in Afghanistan reads like No Easy Day meets Redeployment.It's hot and getting hotter this summer in Afghanipakiraqistan—the preferred name for the ambiguous stretch of the world where the US Special Forces operate with little outside attention. Team leader Dutch Shaw is missing his late grandmother. She was the last link he had to civilian life, to any kind of world of innocence.But there's no time to mourn. After two helicopters in a sister squadron are shot down, Shaw and his team know that they're going to be spun up and sent back in, deep into insurgent territory, where a mysterious new organization called al-Ayeelaa has been attracting high-value targets from across the region. As Shaw and his men fight their way closer to the source, mission by mission, they begin to realize that their way may have been prepared for them in advance—and not by a welcoming host.The Knife is a debut novel of intense authenticity by a former soldier in a Special Operations Command direct-action team. As scenes of horseshoes and horseplay cut to dim Ambien-soaked trips in helicopters and beyond, Ritchell's story takes us deep beneath the testosterone-laced patter and into the lonelier, more ambivalent world of military life in the Middle East. The result is a fast-paced journey into darkness, a quintessential novel of the American wars of the twenty-first century.

About Ross Ritchell

Ross Ritchell is a former soldier in a United States Special Operations Command direct-action team conducting classified operations in the Middle East. Upon his discharge, he enrolled at Northwestern University, where he earned an MFA. He lives with his family in Illinois.

About Peter Ganim

Peter Ganim, an Earphones Award–winning narrator, is an American actor who has appeared on stage, on television, and in film. He has performed voice-over work since 1994.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Rene on June 10, 2018

This is one of those novels that should have been a hit. Ross Ritchell writes what he knows, and what he knows is the madness of war. But Ritchell goes deeper into the questions of what modern America has made of masculinity. The entire novel sings with authenticity.......more

Goodreads review by Minty on April 03, 2015

All exposition, no plot. Not my bag. I'm married to an ex-SpecOps guy, so I have as good a grasp as anyone who hasn't been there on what middle eastern combat was like. I feel that often these books portray it in almost a voyeuristic way, particularly the camaraderie and male friendship under pressu......more

Goodreads review by George on August 05, 2016

A knife is a tool: it cuts things. Like all tools, it can be used for good and bad. Sometimes, bad things can happen when it's being used for good. The nature of a tool. The knife that is the tool being used in The Knife, the debut novel by Ross Ritchell, is a five man special operation force in Af......more

Goodreads review by Ross on October 15, 2021

I was doing a bit of ‘housekeeping’ on my Kindle when I came across this book that’s been sitting in my TBR pile for about 5 years and decided I just had to read it. Shaw is a military ‘operator’ who, along with the rest of his team, is just being mustered for their latest deployment to Afghanipakist......more

Goodreads review by Robert on February 09, 2019

One of the best war novels ever--best one I've read about the IA conflict. Page-turner, poetic at times. The attention to detail, sensory and technical, is masterful. One of my students (I teach creative writing to veterans with PTSD through UCLA) turned me on to this gem. More than just a war novel......more

Quotes

“The most gripping and thought-provoking novel I’ve read this year, The Knife will enchant, move, and haunt its readers. Ross Ritchell’s gritty prose is stunning, and his painfully human characters linger in the mind. The Knife is a powerful mediation on war and man, told by a remarkably gifted novelist.” Michael Koryta, New York Times bestselling author

“Ross Ritchell’s The Knife…reminiscent of Tim O’Brien’s Vietnam novel, The Things They Carried…[is] the best novel yet about life at the point of the knife, in these times of overlapping foreign wars.” Alan Cheuse, NPR’s All Things Considered

“Ritchell offers you-are-there fiction about the fighting in what he has dubbed Afghanipakiraqistan.” Library Journal

“A vividly rendered military thriller.” Booklist

“An account of the long stretches of boredom and short bursts of adrenaline that make up a Ranger team’s deployment in Afghanistan…Draws the high drama and moral complexity of the Rangers’ life on the front lines from a place of narrative distance, allowing the reader to fill in the unstated emotions of Shaw and his team, giving their story great poignancy. A beautiful book about the soldiers who sit on the front lines of the US military machine.” Kirkus Reviews

“The Knife is intimate immersion in a squad of soldiers in a war zone. It is funny, disgusting, warm, and terrifying, by turns or all at once. It is beautiful. Honest. Heartbreaking.” Katherine Dunn, author of Geek Love

“Raw, authentic, and deeply moving, this is a stunning debut.” Rene Denfeld, author of The Enchanted

“Ross Ritchell has written a compellingly authentic debut novel. Its uniquely haunting effect arises in part from a dissonance between the clarity of its action and the immediacy of its telegraphic prose, and yet at the same time there’s a convincing sense of disassociation, a shadow of shocked, repressed emotion.” Stuart Dybek, author of The Coast of Chicago

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