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Presentation
Disillusionment in Afghanistan. A five country study into plots by soldier-authors
The Military, Soldiers, Politics and Society. RC 01 Interim Conference 2012 (2012)
  • Esmeralda Kleinreesink
Abstract
It is often said that the majority of stories written by war veterans in the 20th century are disillusionment plots. But is that still the case in the 21st century? Are young men and women still going into, for example, Afghanistan with high ideals that are shattered during their deployment, and write books about their disillusionment? In this paper, the preliminary results are presented from a study into military books. Based on Friedman’s plot theory, this study compares all 54 autobiographical books published between 2001 and 2010 by Afghanistan veterans in three different languages from five different countries (the Netherlands, Germany, the UK, the US and Canada) to see if in the 21st century veterans are still mainly writing disillusionment plots and whether different countries produce different narratives.
Keywords
  • soldier authors,
  • military writers,
  • narratives,
  • cross-cultural,
  • books,
  • UK,
  • Germany,
  • Netherlands
Publication Date
July, 2012
Citation Information
Esmeralda Kleinreesink. "Disillusionment in Afghanistan. A five country study into plots by soldier-authors" The Military, Soldiers, Politics and Society. RC 01 Interim Conference 2012 (2012)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/esmeralda_kleinreesink/2/