Publishers Weekly
★ 09/25/2023
Fritz holds nothing back in this raw and engrossing debut memoir about his experiences in Afghanistan as a cryptologic linguist for the U.S. Air Force. Raised by his single mother in Lake City, Fla., Fritz had to work long hours in a Chinese restaurant to help ensure that his family’s utility bills were paid. Exhaustion resulted in subpar grades, despite his academic promise and love of literature, and Fritz was rejected from every college he applied to. In 2007, he followed up on an Army recruiter’s high school presentation about becoming a cryptic linguist, and was accepted to the Air Force’s language school in Monterey, Calif., where he learned Dari, the official language of Afghanistan. In 2011, Fritz arrived in Afghanistan, and soon began listening to suspected Taliban fighters’ communications while flying above them in massive military aircraft, tasked with determining in real time who was a threat and who was an innocent civilian. Over time, Fritz grew horrified by the deaths his work facilitated and increasingly dubious about the war’s goals, having become attuned to the humanity of “enemy” forces by spending so long listening to their mundane exchanges. His mental turmoil led to thoughts of suicide and a decision to leave the military. After Fritz graduated from Columbia University, he went to medical school and became a physician. The grim subject matter is often leavened by welcome humor, and Fritz’s slow-moving evolution from soldier to healer is profoundly moving. This is a standout wartime memoir. Agents: Claudia Cross and Frank Weimann, Folio Literary. (Nov.)
From the Publisher
"The war in Afghanistan ranks as America’s longest, a conflict that started with strong public support in 2001 but ended two decades later misunderstood, controversial—and unwon. Ian Fritz’s book illuminates not only the American side, the little-known polyglot world of U.S. military linguists in particular, but also that of the Taliban. Fritz has done something difficult and noteworthy. He is a blunt and thoughtful guide who brings the Taliban to us in their own words, beyond the caricatures, and helps us understand who they, “the enemy,” really are—their war zone comradery, motivations, and humor amid all the violence. And why, in the end, they won the war. In these pages, Taliban voices have lasting echoes because Ian Fritz is a good listener and compelling writer."
—J. Kael Weston, author of The Mirror Test: America at War in Iraq and Afghanistan
“The future of war has arrived; and the voices of its dead are in this haunting book.”—Elliot Ackerman, author of The Fifth Act: America's End in Afghanistan
“For most Americans, even for many servicemembers who deployed to Afghanistan, the Taliban proved a shapeless, inscrutable enemy over our two decades of war. Not so for Ian Fritz. As an airborne linguist tasked with listening in on suspected Taliban’s communications, he grew to know them intimately, understanding their wants, fears, and dreams in ways that transcend the normal boundaries of war. What the Taliban Told Me is a beautiful book told with rare honesty and seeking and introduces Ian Fritz as a powerful moral and literary voice.”
—Matt Gallagher, author of Kaboom: Embracing the Suck in a Savage Little War and the novels Youngblood and Daybreak
“This book is precisely what policymakers in Washington needed 20 years ago. What the Taliban Told Me achieves something that few War on Terror books have accomplished; it puts a human face on the enemy. This somber and well-crafted memoir is essential reading for anyone attempting to comprehend our war in Afghanistan. Fritz brings a fitting conclusion to 20 years of conflict in a land that Americans never truly understood.”
—Kevin Maurer, #1 New York Times bestselling author of No Easy Day
“A fraught, moving account by a conflicted soldier.” —Kirkus
Kirkus Reviews
2023-09-15
A linguist for the U.S. Air Force chronicles his service in Afghanistan.
During his deployment, Fritz, an airborne cryptologic linguist, realized that language has the ability to humanize the so-called enemy. The author worked as a direct support operator, translating Dari and Pashto over two deployments in 2011. Hailing from a poor family in Florida, Fritz enlisted at age 20 in order to access college, and he spent a year studying Dari and Pashtun during accelerated Air Force language training in Monterey, California. As the author demonstrates, the work conducted by airborne linguists aboard military gunships is strategic and important, even though “the communications they receive or interpret rarely have an immediate impact on something actively happening on the ground.” In a vernacular account full of military abbreviations and slang, Fritz frankly reveals some of the chatter he heard and had to translate quickly. Listening to Taliban combatants exulting at their kills on the one hand, and the U.S. soldiers celebrating theirs on the other, prompted decidedly uncomfortable emotions. “Because I could hear it all, both sides of this strange and eternal war,” he writes, “the boundary that was supposed to separate them from us no longer existed.” Fritz’s first deployment was 322.5 hours and earned him two medals; the next lasted only two months. He writes poignantly about his increasing dread before the second deployment, hearing of other DSOs “losing it” and falling into binge-drinking and other destructive behavior. Ultimately, Fritz grew disenchanted with the gung-ho killing and questioned the motives of the U.S. government. Never diagnosed with PTSD, Fritz calls the damage he sustained “moral injury,” defined by psychiatrists as “the damage done to one’s conscience or moral compass when that person perpetrates, witnesses, or fails to prevent acts that transgress one’s own moral beliefs.”
A fraught, moving account by a conflicted soldier.
