{"title":"Books by Karl Marlantes","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9781804711064","title":"Cold Victory","description":"\u003cp\u003eHelsinki, 1947. Finland teeters between the Soviet Union and the West. Everyone is being watched. At an embassy party, Finnish-American Arnie Koski and Russian Mikhail Bobrov drunkenly challenge each other to a friendly - but\u003cbr\u003eclandestine - cross-country ski race. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut the stakes becomes higher than either could imagine. While the two skiers are unreachable in the arctic wilderness, news of the race is leaked to the media, with Russia's brutal secret police awaiting the outcome...\u003cbr\u003eAnother masterful novel from the author of the modern classic \u003ci\u003eMatterhorn\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54926340587893,"sku":"9781804711064","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781804711064_b7837e56-ca64-476d-997c-6a1ccde2baf7.jpg?v=1786028212"},{"product_id":"9780857893802","title":"What It Is Like To Go To War","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn 1968, at the age of 22, Karl Marlantes abandoned his Oxford University scholarship to sign up for active service with the US Marine Corps in Vietnam. Pitched into a war that had no defined military objective other than kill ratios and body counts, what he experienced over the next thirteen months in the jungles of South East Asia shook him to the core. But what happened when he came home covered with medals was almost worse. It took Karl four decades to come to terms with what had really happened, during the course of which he painstakingly constructed a fictionalized version of his war, MATTERHORN, which has subsequently been hailed as the definitive Vietnam novel.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWHAT IT IS LIKE TO GO TO WAR takes us back to Vietnam, but this time there is no fictional veil. Here are the  hard-won truths that underpin MATTERHORN: the author's real-life experiences behind the book's indelible scenes. But it is much more than this. It is part exorcism of Karl's own experiences of combat, part confession, part philosophical primer for the young man about to enter combat. It It is also a devastatingly frank answer to the questions '\u003ci\u003eWhat is it like to be a soldier?\u003c\/i\u003e' \u003ci\u003eWhat is it like to face death?\u003c\/i\u003e' and \u003ci\u003e'What is it like to kill someone?\u003c\/i\u003e'\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56295417119093,"sku":"9780857893802","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780857893802_5ec2ed96-d481-4f86-8a7e-be855e8efe2d.jpg?v=1786015823"},{"product_id":"9781848874961","title":"Matterhorn","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e'MY FAVOURITE BOOK OF ALL TIME' JEREMY CLARKSON\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eFire Support Base Matterhorn:\u003c\/b\u003e a fortress carved out of the grey-green mountain jungle. Cold monsoon clouds wreath its mile-high summit, concealing a battery of 105-mm howitzers surrounded by deep bunkers, carefully constructed fields of fire and the 180 marines of Bravo Company. Just three kilometres from Laos and two from North Vietnam, there is no more isolated outpost of America's increasingly desperate war in Vietnam.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSecond Lieutenant Waino Mellas, 21 years old and just a few days into his 13-month tour, has barely arrived at Matterhorn before Bravo Company is ordered to abandon their mountain and sent deep in-country in pursuit of a North Vietnamese Army unit of unknown size.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBeyond the relative safety of the perimeter wire, Mellas will face disease, starvation, leeches, tigers and an almost invisible enemy. Beneath the endless jungle canopy, Bravo Company will confront competing ambitions, duplicitous officers and simmering racial tensions. Behind them, always, Matterhorn. The impregnable mountain fortress they built and then abandoned, without a shot, to the North Vietnamese Army...\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e'One of the most profound and devastating novels ever to come out of Vietnam - or any war' Sebastian Junger, \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56308006551925,"sku":"9781848874961","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781848874961_92fa0b60-61fa-476a-aedc-c0629e47e9e8.jpg?v=1786029714"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-karl-marlantes.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}