Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Apr 2010
368 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
Operating Base Cornucopia: A three hundred-year-old fortress in the remote Iraqi desert where a few dozen soldiers wait for their next assignment; among them, Private Toby Durrant, a self-described "broke nobody." Then a deadly ambush touches off events that put Durrant in the middle of a far-reaching conspiracy. Insurgents massing in the nearby hills, a secretive member of military intelligence, an abandoned toy factory, and a mysterious, half-feral child—Durrant must figure out the links between them if he’s to survive. A classic story of a decent man trying to do right under impossible circumstances, this blistering look at military life in "the sandbox" of Iraq marks the debut of a major new talent.
"Starred Review. Readers will empathize with the author’s everyman narrator as Toby tries to survive while maintaining his humanity. Zimmerman is a talent to watch." - Publishers Weekly
"This fine first novel skillfully portrays both the eternal verities of war as well as the stark differences that each war imposes on the young who do the fighting..." - Booklist
"[T]his novel has considerable strengths but is ultimately marred by a disappointing and somewhat incoherent ending." - Library Journal
"The Sandbox sabotaged me. I read the first four pages and my sleeve got caught in the lives of these soldiers, and the story was gritty and real and offhand, and so I lost the day and the next, and I’m so happy to report back that this terrific novel offers us both the world of the conflict and another story just as powerful. Zimmerman's made a fine book." - Ron Carlson, author of The Signal
This information about The Sandbox was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
David Zimmerman, the eldest of six children, was raised in Atlanta, Georgia by an army nurse and an army JAG officer. After receiving his MFA degree in creative writing from the University of Alabama, he spent several years living and working in Brazil and Ethiopia. The Sandbox is his first novel.
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