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The Watch

3.55 of 5 stars 3.55 · rating details · 524 ratings · 155 reviews

Following a desperate night-long battle, a group of beleaguered soldiers in an isolated base in Kandahar are faced with a lone woman demanding the return of her brother’s body. Is she a spy, a black widow, a lunatic, or is she what she claims to be: a grieving young sister intent on burying her brother according to local rites? Single-minded in her mission, she refuses to...more

Hardcover, 304 pages

Published June 5th 2012 by Hogarth (first published January 1st 2012)

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Jul 13, 2012 Wendy rated it 5 of 5 stars

I've been an admirer of this writer's work since I read The Storyteller of Marrakesh last year. The Watch I feel helps me in my five-years-and-counting project of figuring out America, and how I fit into it, through great fiction.

Roy-Bhattacharya recently spoke about the disgust and apathy that are the most common responses to discussion of the war in Afghanistan. There's been good reportage and memoir coming out of it, but surprisingly little serious fiction. With understanding and often sympa...more

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Jun 09, 2012 Jessica rated it 2 of 5 stars

Wow. I really wanted to like this book. There is almost nothing in the world of fiction about the war in Afghanistan, and that complicated place is begging for a way to be understood - or not understood, as the case may be. Roy-Bhattacharya seemed like a good candidate to introduce people to the complexities of that land, and to the Americans who have now been laboring there for more than a decade. But he fails. Technically, all the pieces are in place: bewildered, working-class grunts; exhauste...more

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Jul 21, 2012 Glennchuck rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: just-gave-up

Made it to page 193 and bailed. "The Watch" started well, narrated by a compelling Afghani character confronting a U.S. military outpost. The book's perspective shifts from character to character, all in first person, describing a single event. The first one or two chapters narrated by U.S. military characters were OK, but then the author either hit a literary wall or the story lost so much steam that I started to notice how immature the prose was. Much of the flashbacks and dialogue--meant to s...more

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Aug 09, 2012 Jennifer rated it 3 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Sep 23, 2012 Grady rated it 5 of 5 stars

The Single Most Powerful Novel of the Year

Almost inexplicably a novel catches the attention of a reader and somehow makes such a profound impression on every level that imprints the book permanently on the brain. THE WATCH by Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya for this reader is such a novel. Not only is the story brilliantly crafted and original in the manner of relating a single story from the vantage of several of the disparate, impeccably defined people involved in an incident, it is also a well resea...more The Single Most Powerful Novel of the Year

Almost inexplicably a novel catches the attention of a reader and somehow makes such a profound impression on every level that imprints the book permanently on the brain. THE WATCH by Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya for this reader is such a novel. Not only is the story brilliantly crafted and original in the manner of relating a single story from the vantage of several of the disparate, impeccably defined people involved in an incident, it is also a well researched exploration of the current war in Afghanistan, and at the same time has the courage to transpose the ancient Greek myth of Antigone in contemporary guise. How the author has been able to master the languages and modes of expression of so many cultures so well helps to understand why, as never before, we are given insights into a lengthy war that no one seems to understand - now or tat the inception or in predicting the future of that disaster.

As Indian born and educated but now living in New York Roy-Bhattacharya's biographical data states, in 2008, he set out to write a cycle of three discrete novels set in the Islamic world, both to redress the gross simplifications accorded that culture in the West, and to highlight aspects of the contemporary world's Muslim inheritance. The novels are The Storyteller of Marrakesh (dealing with oral storytelling traditions) 2011, Like A Perfect Circle Drawn on Water (set in Isfahan and dealing with calligraphy & Sufi poetry): 2013, and Babylon (set in Iraq and dealing with the literary inheritance of the Baghdad Caliphate): 2015.At the same time, in order to directly address the on-going conflict between the West and the Muslim world, he set out to write a trilogy of interconnected novels set in Afghanistan and the US. They are Book 1: God of War (set in the mountains of Northeastern Afghanistan) forthcoming, Book 2: The Watch (set in Kandahar province & based on Sophocles' Antigone) 2012 and Book 3: Afterland (set in the US & based on Sophocles' Ajax): forthcoming.' It is THE WATCH to which we have access at this point, and should the other novels equal the breadth and impact of this one, then he should be a candidate for both the Nobel Prize, the Pulitzer Prize, the Booker Prize and many others.

Basing a story on a Greek character requires a bit of background: Antigone is a daughter of the accidentally incestuous marriage between King Oedipus of Thebes and his mother Jocasta. She is the subject of a popular story in which she attempts to secure a respectable burial for her brother Polynices, even though he was a traitor to Thebes and the law forbids even mourning for him, on pain of death. This is the starting point of THE WATCH: Antigone is the story of what goes wrong when two codes of honor collide. Moral relativism would see these as nothing more than lifestyle choices, and tolerant liberalism try to negotiate a compromise. But communities who believe such codes are facts, in the same way that we might believe in the sciences or human rights, cannot negotiate them away. A tragic impasse results. Roy-Bhattacharya transposes the Antigone tragedy to the battlefields of today's wars of religion. This eight-sided book, set in Kandahar province, uses the voices of seven protagonists and a journal to tell its story.

The technique of telling his story through various eyes requires a depth of knowledge of speech-rhythms and thought-worlds of culturally different individuals. He somehow conveys that both Americans and Afghans remain individuals, however strict the code they live by. The American platoon includes an Ivy League-educated Lieutenant, a First Sergeant from the Deep South who loves the Blues, Ramirez the Hispanic American, and Pratt the Alaskan. And it is to the author's credit that he allows several characters in points of exhaustion to fall into waking dreams - back at home, or visiting loved ones - which fill in their back-story. The mutilated young Pashto Muslim woman Nizam (the contemporary Antigone) appears legless on a cart - her only mission is to retrieve the body of her brother who was killed in a devastating overrun of the American, a plea that goes unheard by the Americans. Each chapter is named for the character who has observed this invasion and this supplication by Nizam. Yes, we hear a lot of misguided patriotic delusions on the part of the men in the campo, but we also are allowed to her the American side of the anti-war feeling through the words of the medic - Doc.

Some passages deserve quoting: `War is the only real connection we have with the people of this country. They know it; we know it. We understand each other, We have an agreement. We have our code of retaliation; they call theirs badal; we call ours payback. It's the age-old spiral of attack and revenge. The only difference between us - and it is significant - is that we're visitors to this place. We don't belong here; we're not trapped by its ragged history, its chronicle of failures, its uncertain future. That makes it all the more critical for us to do what we need to do, do it quickly, and get out. Get out before we become part of the cycle of failure and violence. Get out before we become just another failed tribe.' And in another passage discussing Nizam's plea for her brother's corpse to bury, we read:' When you kill people and wipe out their families, strafe their homes and burn down their villages, litter their fields with fragmentation bombs and gun down their livestock, you've lost the whole f*****g battle for hearts and minds. I mean, who're we trying to kid? Ourselves? Is it any wonder they're fighting back? We're not winning this war; we're creating lifelong enemies. It's time to admit that our leadership has ring-fenced us with lies.'

But enough of summarizing what does not lend itself to summary; the author's goal seems to be closing a painful gap between the beliefs of disparate religions that have lead us into battles that cannot be won, wars that can only harm and destroy from all sides. It is a powerful, immensely moving, compelling, and brilliant achievement. Highly recommended.

Grady Harp(less)

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Sep 21, 2012 Louise added it · review of another edition

Shelves: literature-fiction

Story Description:

Knopf Canada|June 5, 2012|Hardcover|ISBN: 978-0-307-40223-3

In this powerful novel set in contemporary Kandahar, an Afghan woman approaches an American military base to demand the return of her brother’s body.

At a stark outpost in the Kandahar mountain range, a team of American soldiers watches a young Afghan woman approach. She has come to beg for the return of her brother’s body. The camp’s tense, claustrophobic atmosphere comes to a boil as the men argue about what to do next...more

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Sep 19, 2012 Naeem rated it 1 of 5 stars

Dear Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya,

I threw your book down on the floor after finishing it and yelled, “No! no! no!”

The first chapter is perhaps one of the most brilliant I have read: tight, exact, culturally specific, and with momentum that propelled me through the rest of the book. The chapter alone is worth reading the book.

Alas, it is the only good chapter.

There are so many things wrong with your book that I don’t know where to start. Let me go through the list:

- Antigone? You want to start and...more

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Aug 28, 2012 Ken rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: war, afghanistan, literary

In 1970, fresh out of Vietnam and not feeling welcome at home, I felt the need for a respite in a very different country and chose Thailand. That didn't work out so next up was Afghanistan on a friend's suggestion. It turned out to be one of the best things I've ever done. I remember writing a postcard home about how peaceful the country was, the friendly people, the slow pace of life. It was like dropping into a past time. The countryside was beautiful, filled with fruit orchards, there was onl...more In 1970, fresh out of Vietnam and not feeling welcome at home, I felt the need for a respite in a very different country and chose Thailand. That didn't work out so next up was Afghanistan on a friend's suggestion. It turned out to be one of the best things I've ever done. I remember writing a postcard home about how peaceful the country was, the friendly people, the slow pace of life. It was like dropping into a past time. The countryside was beautiful, filled with fruit orchards, there was only one highway connecting all the major cities, and I traveled by bus around the country for four months. The dollar went a long way then. I started out in Kabul, went to Mazar in the northwest, then Badakhshan in the northeast by camel, then south to Kandahar and west to Herat. Each province had a different people, Uzbeks and Turkmen in Mazar, Uzbeks and Tajiks in the northeast, Pashtuns in the southeast, Hazaras and Tajiks in Herat. Even the languages were different, but there was one thing in common, the peoples' hospitality wherever I went. Zahir Shah was the figurehead king, but he was liked by everyone and held the country together as a centralizing symbol.

I always planned to go back but the years passed, and then in the late 1970s, everything changed. More than thirty years later, none of my friends in the cities from that era have survived, the orchards are gone, there's fighting everywhere, and my nephew, who recently returned from serving there, tells me the entire place is a dust bowl. I can't say I understood how this happened, but reading this novel brought back memories of the independent spirit of the people. The character of Nizam reminded me of young women I met in the countryside, as was still possible at that time, girls who bargained hard over fruits the likes of which I've never again come across, especially the melons.

I'm an old man now, and thinking about the mess the world's in makes me tired. Nothing's been learned since Vietnam. It fills me with sadness.

I respect this writer and what he's done. I think the book he's written is beautiful and captures the spirit of the country I used to know. Will everyone like it? I don't know. People no longer want to be reminded of the mistakes made that lead to wars and lost lives. For myself, I thank the writer for his beautiful, difficult book.(less)

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Aug 28, 2012 Jessica rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012-best-reads

This is my first Goodreads review. The Watch is an insanely good book. Moving, intelligent, and very provocative, I defy anyone who can finish it without feeling complicit. As well, the humor that runs through the conversations is very real,mainly because the two things that get soldiers through the insane conditions they have to cope with are humor and profanity, and The Watch has plenty of both. At the same time, it's the first war fiction I'v e read about Afghanistan or Iraq that gives a soun...more

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Aug 18, 2012 Jack R Moorhead rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Readers of literary and serious fiction and non-fiction

Recommended to Jack R Moorhead by: Bookseller recommendation

Shelves: international-war-suspense, 2012, classic, psychology

I read The Watch on the recommendation of my bookseller. I read it in three sittings, and then went back and reread the first chapter to check on a few details. Except for that the title is already taken, halfway through the book I thought it should have been called The Killing Field, not only because of the barren deserted field that is at the forefront of the action, but also because for the men in the battlefield what is the prevalent act of war other than about killing? And for all the train...more I read The Watch on the recommendation of my bookseller. I read it in three sittings, and then went back and reread the first chapter to check on a few details. Except for that the title is already taken, halfway through the book I thought it should have been called The Killing Field, not only because of the barren deserted field that is at the forefront of the action, but also because for the men in the battlefield what is the prevalent act of war other than about killing? And for all the training given to young men and women sent off to fight wars, the aim of all the training is to make soldiers better killers. There are other books that show how men and women can become capable of terrible acts of violence in wartime. One example would be Christopher Browning's extraordinary Second World War study of a company of German soldiers, Ordinary Men. On our side, there will always be Mai Lai. In a time where the dividing line between military and civilian has become blurred, the task of killing, I would argue, has become more ethically difficult, although the reverse argument, given the proliferation of drones in combat, can also be made.

Unlike most people, I suppose, I felt that owing to its psychological tension and graphic language The Watch read almost as a documentary study of the realities of combat as seen not on a movie or television screen but as experienced by fighting men at the front. The author has thanked several army officers at the end of the book, and their contribution to the realism of the book is clear. The many small details combine with the driving story to result in an extraordinary achievement. Though clearly not a comfortable read, and very far from entertainment, I read The Watch as one of the most remarkable recent analyses of men in combat since Sebastian Junger's 2010 documentary study, The War. Read together, the two books show, with unflinching honesty, how men seek to survive and come out whole, both psychologically and in body, in landscapes of great stress and violence.

I would also like to point out the remarkable compassion shown by the author towards the combatants on both sides. The Analogy to Antigone aside, there's a humanity and deep empathy that shine through The Watch and its devastating conclusion. It's a must for all concerned about our ability to survive and cope with the destructive trends so evident today.(less)

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Aug 02, 2012 Redstone rated it 5 of 5 stars

What an astonishing and thought provoking book! For this Australian, an uncanny insight into the American conduct of war, the war in Afghanistan, and American views of themselves and others in this war in which Australia was among the very early participants. As with other readers, I was taken with the author's determination to balance perspectives, a rare but essential quality of the best war fiction. Aspects of the writing brought back memories of the disaster in Vietnam, another quagmire in w...more

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Jul 24, 2012 Kieran rated it 4 of 5 stars

The story is well-written and, I think, wonderfully interweaves the eight different perspectives occurring over a few days to carefully construct the characters, the atmosphere of a US military outpost in the harsh environment of the Afghan desert, and to juxtapose the different cultures.

It is a story that can be enjoyed very much for it's plot and characters alone, but one that I also found to be very thought-provoking and topical, drawing on many different themes and conflicts. With the genera...more

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Jul 19, 2012 Megan27 rated it 5 of 5 stars

Along with the dark humor of Satantango by the contemporary Hungarian writer Laszlo Krasnahorkai, The Watch is my best read of the year without a doubt.

The story is simple and stark. A young Afghan woman, mutilated in a drone attack that killed the rest of her family, appears before a remote US outpost to ask for the return of her brother's body. Trouble is, her brother led an overnight attack on the outpost that resulted in his own death and that of the rest of his band, but not before the sol...more

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Jul 12, 2012 Julie Gant rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book broke my heart.

On a personal note, I lived and worked in Afghanistan in the zeroes, mostly in Kabul, and and the locals always struck me as good, simple, hospitable people. What is now happening in that country is terrible, and this is the first book I've read that shows both sides of the story, without taking sides, which makes it different from almost all the Western and especially American accounts I've read about the war. I've tried to keep up with the friends I made there, who're...more

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Jun 24, 2012 Doug Bremner rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, read-in-2012

The Watch, a new novel by Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya, is an interesting story of war and conflict told from multiple perspectives. It starts out with the story of a disabled girl who has her entire family to bombing in Afghanistan, who takes a long journey to retrieve the body of her brother, who was recently killed leading an assault on a base in Kandahar. She camps outside the base for days waiting for the soldiers to release the body for burial, which they have orders not to do. This story inte...more

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Jun 21, 2012 Nicole rated it 1 of 5 stars

There are so many problems with this novel, not the least of which is the question that the whole plot hangs on and the entire Army base wrestles with---is the woman who she says she is--- would never have been asked by the Army in the first place. In the real world, the woman would have been told to see the local provisional official and that would have been the end of the Army's involvement. Putting that aside, the characters in this book are the same old stereotypes of military men: trigger-h...more

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Jun 09, 2012 Steve Campbell rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: readers of David Finkel, Sebastian Junger, Michael Herr

Shelves: war, 2012-top-reads, fiction, history

The stuff of everyday headlines these days and very possibly the best book I've read on the current wars. On the edge, driven, taut, and by far the best depiction of American soldiers on the front line. In many ways a mixture of Jarhead and War, it takes you straight into the fighting, bleeding, dying. In simple, direct language, with just the kind of 24/7 unexpected situations you face in combat.

So what do you do when you're faced with a civilian who turns up just when you've survived a viciou...more

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May 10, 2012 Lana rated it 5 of 5 stars

Lana says:

I already knew from reading The Gabriel Club that Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya doesn’t just tell a story: he puts you at the heart of it and opens your senses to its pulsating life. So that’s what I was looking for when I read The Watch, and that’s what I got. But I hadn’t anticipated that the life it opened to would be quite so devastating. I knew by the description that the story takes place in war torn Afghanistan, so I expected it to disturb: war stories do disturb. But Roy-Bhattachary...more Lana says:

I already knew from reading The Gabriel Club that Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya doesn’t just tell a story: he puts you at the heart of it and opens your senses to its pulsating life. So that’s what I was looking for when I read The Watch, and that’s what I got. But I hadn’t anticipated that the life it opened to would be quite so devastating. I knew by the description that the story takes place in war torn Afghanistan, so I expected it to disturb: war stories do disturb. But Roy-Bhattacharya’s unfolding sequence of distinct narrative voices pulsates the life of an American military outpost in the Afghan desert in a way that changes consciousness in the reader. Unless you’ve been there yourself, whatever you thought you knew about the Afghan war vanishes.

This happens because you live the war from inside the consciousness of seven different narrators. This doesn’t mean just getting varied perspectives on a single event, multiple angles that require piecing together to form a complete picture. Rather, narrator after narrator, you come to feel what each feels. That’s the disturbance: no authorial voice tells you what you are supposed to think. Neither does any single narrator sound more reliable than the next. You may feel a greater affinity with some characters than with others, but you still know that every one of them is telling his or her own pure truth. What makes this devastating is the constant reassessments of the situation that each character keeps making yet cannot match up with their real time perceptions: constant and precise yet still uncertain reassessments by the soldiers, by the commanding officer, by the medic, the translator, the lieutenant. And by the strange burqa-clad figure whose arrival a day after a bloody firefight sets the already strung-out military company even more on edge.

In this tense stand-off, what the reader gets from each narrator is inevitably partial, differently so for every voice, human in its limitations, stripped of societal pretense: voices spontaneous as expletives or unbidden prayers. Hearing these voices, seeing through these eyes, feeling through these senses, the reader discovers that what might before have seemed good enough for rationalizing the Afghan war no longer feels tolerable: there can be no justification for any of these people, regardless of allegiances, to simply get wasted.

To read The Watch is to witness unraveling of justified warfare, when those who live the reality of it find it to be not so much a noble cause as a desperate struggle to survive. The storyline is simple and the action brief: in The Watch, every voice becomes the title character, suspended in that immanence, tensed by hair trigger uncertainty about what will happen next. By living in the mind of each narrator, you realize that on the deepest human level, you yourself could be any of them, and you want every one of them to survive. The futility of war as a tool for solving human problems could not be made more palpable. This moving book makes real not only what it means for human lives to be sacrificed in war, but also why such wanton sacrifice must end.
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Feb 23, 2013 Lisa rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 21st-century, india, library-book-or-loan

The Watch by Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya has flaws you don’t expect to find in the work of an experienced author, but it’s still a compelling story. It’s a modern retelling of Sophocles’ Antigone, set in a remote military outpost in Afghanistan, and it treats the same theme as David Malouf’s thoughtful Ransom (itself based on The Iliad, see my review), that is, how the respectful burial of the dead is a defining characteristic of humanity.

Human remains at Lake Mungo in Australia provide the earlies...more The Watch by Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya has flaws you don’t expect to find in the work of an experienced author, but it’s still a compelling story. It’s a modern retelling of Sophocles’ Antigone, set in a remote military outpost in Afghanistan, and it treats the same theme as David Malouf’s thoughtful Ransom (itself based on The Iliad, see my review), that is, how the respectful burial of the dead is a defining characteristic of humanity.

Human remains at Lake Mungo in Australia provide the earliest evidence of cremation as a burial rite, showing that 40,000 years ago (and maybe more) people took great care to treat the dead with respect. And whether or not rituals for the dead are associated with religion or superstition or simply long-standing customs, these observances raise complications in that other most ancient of human endeavours – war. Cannibals eat symbolic body parts of their enemies to deflect their power, and the triumphant display of the vanquished in one insulting form or another has long been used to assert the power of the victors. What we see of modern conflicts in photography and film often includes bodies spreadeagled on the ground, but the media shields us from mangled body parts and the human face. And the Fallen of our own side are generally brought home to their loved ones with dignity and respectful military rituals.

But in Roy-Bhattacharya’s story, a lone woman confronts the American soldiers at an isolated outpost in the Kandahar region, demanding the return of her brother’s body. She says he wasn’t an insurgent Talib, but rather a freedom-fighter repelling the invaders of his country. The baffled men on the base aren’t sure whether she’s a lunatic, a Black Widow suicide bomber, a spy or a lure sent by the enemy in the nearby mountains, or simply what she says she is – a grieving sister wanting to perform the burial rites that she thinks her heroic brother deserves.

To read the rest of my review, please visit http://anzlitlovers.com/2013/02/24/th...(less)

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Sep 15, 2012 Erin Cataldi rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012, all-time-favorites, goodreads-giveaway

The Watch had me from the very first paragraph, hell, I was in near tears at the end of the first chapter. A simply phenomenal book. Impossible to put down, and even harder to stop thinking about. The Watch opens with a young Middle Eastern woman traveling far across the mountains to an American military base in order to collect her brother's body after a failed attack on the fort (retaliation for the bombing of her village) and bury it according to Muslim custom. Arriving at the base she is met...more

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May 22, 2012 Kelly Knapp rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: everyone over the age of 15 or 16

Recommended to Kelly by: Goodreads Firstreads program

I would have given this book a 5 star rating, but it felt like someone forgot to finish it.

This book was absolutly amazing. After a firefight on an Afganastan/American military post, a young disabled woman travels from her home to the area where the fight happened. She has one purpose, to see her brother given a proper muslim bureal...or does she?

This is the problem. What are her motives? Does she really want to bury her brother or is she a suicide bomber? Should the men in the post trust her, o...more I would have given this book a 5 star rating, but it felt like someone forgot to finish it.

This book was absolutly amazing. After a firefight on an Afganastan/American military post, a young disabled woman travels from her home to the area where the fight happened. She has one purpose, to see her brother given a proper muslim bureal...or does she?

This is the problem. What are her motives? Does she really want to bury her brother or is she a suicide bomber? Should the men in the post trust her, or shoot first and ask questions later?

This young woman endures the men's intent to determine her purpose. She allows them to search her carriage, her clothes, and even removes her Burqa. While awaiting their decision, she sets about burying the dead laying out on the plains. She catches and kills a sheep that is one of the many wondering around. And as the men from the post approach her, she takes a knife and cuts a wire, hidden beneath the sheeps covering...

This is the apex of the climax. What has she done? Did she have a bomb after all? We do not know, instead, the novel switches point of view to first one man in the post and then another, and another until you get to see who each person is and how they think. This is war and war is Hell.

The author has a winning book here. The dilemma is deadly accurate. In an age where bombs are strapped to children and sent into a crowd of civilians, where men and women are willing to be suicide bombers...What are the military men suppose to do, trust unreservedly, or distrust completely?

This is a book that should be read by everyone, but especially by those who have never been in the military or in a no rules war zone. It might give them a small taste of the terror felt by each and every military member, regardless of the country.

All of this being said, the ending fell flat for me...no, not flat. It felt like it had be cut off too soon. Almost as though the author had either a page count limit (and so ended it quickly) or had so much emotion tied up in the story that by the time the author reached the end, there was nothing left to give. It seemed too abrupt. I was left feeling like someone had forgotten the last half of the chapter. Others may not feel the same, but for me...I needed a few more pages. After all the set up, we are not given any of the after incident reactions from the post. If I explain further, I would have to tell the reader audience whether or not there was a bomb, but that would ruin the entire story. So, let me finish here by saying, that this has to be one of the best books I have read in years.

I have read hundreds of books, and I would give many of them 4 or 5 stars, but this one is in a league of its own.
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Sep 16, 2012 Sorayya Khan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Joydeep Roy-Battacharya's The Watch is as much a depiction of the US occupation of Afghanistan as it is a depiction of the US soldiers waging war. The opening pages set the scene: An Afghan woman (whose legs have been blown off by a bomb) arrives at a US outpost in Kandahar to ask that her brother's body be returned to her so that she can bury it. The novel is told in multiple first person points of view which include the US base's Afghan translator and a few US soldiers. In this way, we are pri...more

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Aug 02, 2012 Debbie rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: literary fiction

Shelves: 2012-literary-war

Last month I attended a reading in our local bookstore by the author. He was preceded by a Captain from the US army who spoke movingly about his experiences in Afghanistan. Both speakers were emotionally intense and went out of their way to address queries. I remember especially the statement made by the officer that less than 1% of the American population serve in the military and bear the brunt of their sacrifices. Our entire audience was very appreciative of the opportunity given to the offic...more Last month I attended a reading in our local bookstore by the author. He was preceded by a Captain from the US army who spoke movingly about his experiences in Afghanistan. Both speakers were emotionally intense and went out of their way to address queries. I remember especially the statement made by the officer that less than 1% of the American population serve in the military and bear the brunt of their sacrifices. Our entire audience was very appreciative of the opportunity given to the officer to address us, and I believe the author has invited other military officers to speak with him on his book tour, which is a wonderful idea.

The book struck me as psychologically complex and politically astute. However, readers looking for a light summer read should look elsewhere. The story is emotionally wrenching and not for the faint of heart. It represents the hell of modern war as seen from the ground level and really took me inside the soldiers' heads and hearts. Embedded in the veritable midst of hostile enemy territory, the soldiers of Alpha Company still resist being overpowered during a vicious battle and the events that follow. In this I think the author has succeeded in an extremely difficult task, and his level of empathy for the predicament of both sides is acute and meticulous.

My favorite chapter was the journal of Nick Frobenius, the First Lieutenant who is the company's moral compass. Written in the form of entries to his father in Vermont, his poetic voice, intimate, agonized, and informed by scholarship, carried me into the heart of the darkness of this particular war.

I also found the author's descriptions of landscape to have a lyricism that was haunting, stunning in their simplicity, directness, and poignancy.

As such, my only reservation is that there was no explanation of the many military abbreviations mentioned in the text for the common reader. That's a minor quibble, however, and I would recommend this book to anyone who wants an understanding of these ongoing wars. It offers disturbing insights to readers who know about the war, and also to those who do not but would like to find out more. (less)

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Jun 13, 2012 Autumn rated it 4 of 5 stars

The Watch is based off the ancient Greek tale of Antigone. Don't remember that one? Don't feel bad. Neither did I. Basically Antigone's brother dies in battle outside the gates of the city. Antigone wants to bring his body back inside the gates for a proper burial but he's branded a traitor and the punishment is that he has to rot out there. The Watch is kinda flip flopped. The sister is outside the gates of the base and the dead brother is inside, but she wants his body for a proper burial.

The...more

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Apr 15, 2012 Craig rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: first-reads

*Goodreads first reads giveaway*

The first chapter of The Watch had me wondering if I would enjoy the book. It surely made you sympathetic towards the woman, but it also painted the soldiers in a bad light. The remaining chapters broadened the story and provided a more rounded viewpoint of all the characters. Each had good and bad qualities, though I suppose the Captain had only bad ones. Certainly by the end of the story one could reasonably understand the horrors of war and how there is no real...more

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Aug 12, 2012 Alice Meloy rated it 3 of 5 stars

In a desert outpost in present-day Kandahar Province in Afghanistan, a young crippled Afghani woman makes her way toward an American fort, stubbornly trying to claim the body of her brother, who was killed in a raid against the Americans, so that she can give him a proper burial. The events of the next day are seen through the eyes of the girl herself and of several of the American soldiers who participate in the standoff when the Americans refuse to turn over her brother's body. From these seve...more

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Aug 06, 2012 D.S. rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: literary-fiction-war-afghanistan

Compulsively readable. A shaming comment on the nature and balance of power in a conflict zone. If you want to know how and why wars go bad despite the very best intentions, read this book. Combining poetic intensity with spare prose, Roy-Battacharya manages to both capture history in the making and surpass it in this modern masterpiece. Filled with stark conviction, Roy-Battacharya has conyeved the moral quagmire of an entire war by locating it in the experience of a single company of brave men...more

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Feb 15, 2013 Siobhan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Amazing, powerful, and very important book. Though it was reviewed in several journals and the author self describes as a "re-telling of Antigone" I found that connection the least interesting upon first read. It may not necessarily offer a shockingly new perspective on Afghanistan for anyone who has read much about the conflicts and the United States involvement, there are definitely other novels and memoirs that provide similar portraits it certainly is one of the most emotionally wrenching an...more

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Aug 14, 2012 Brendan Hodge rated it 4 of 5 stars

This retelling of Antigone in modern, war-torn Afghanistan is a showcase for modern dialog writing with a number of highly memorable characters. The ambiguities and absurdities of the situation are well done, and the author does an honest job with his American and Afghan characters on both sides of the conflict.

My one issue with it (I wish I could have given 3.5 stars rather than picking 3 or 4) is that I wish Roy-Bhattachary had found a way to more closely mirror the internal logic and inevitab...more

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Feb 13, 2013 Deb Walsh rated it 4 of 5 stars

The writer is obviously very talented. The dialog is very well written reflecting the different ethnicity of the various narrators. The characters are rather predictable in their back stories and motivations. The military men are not very believable in that none of them seem seem conflicted about in their roles. For that reason, I didn't find them to be very believable.

What more interesting is the fact that this military action is currently happening, but you would be hard pressed to find media...more

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About Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya

Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya was educated in politics and philosophy at Presidency College, Calcutta, and the University of Pennsylvania. His novels The Gabriel Club and The Storyteller of Marrakesh have been published in fourteen languages. He lives in the Hudson Valley in upstate New York.

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