Pumpkinflowers ─ A Soldier's Story

The winner of the 2014 Sami Rohr Prize for The Aleppo Codex returns with the gripping true story of a band of young Israeli soldiers, including the author, who in the 1990s were charged with holding an outpost inside Lebanon known as the Pumpkin ("Flowers," the second part of the title, was the code used on military radio for "casualties."). Using humor, pop culture, and even musical references, Friedman recreates the wartime experience in a narrative that is part memoir, part journalism, part military history. The years in question were pivotal ones, seeing the perfection of a type of warfare that would eventually be exported to Afghanistan and Iraq and has come to seem like the only kind of warfare in existence -- wars in which there is never any clear victory, but not quite enough lives are lost to rally the country against it. The dramatic events at this one small hilltop sent out ripples that continue to emanate worldwide.

Matti Friedman?is the author of?The Aleppo Codex,?which won the 2014 Sami Rohr Prize, the ALA Sophie Brody Medal, and other awards. His reporting has taken him from Israel to Morocco, Lebanon, and Washington, DC, and his work has appeared in the?Wall Street Journal,?the?Atlantic,?the?New York Times, and elsewhere.