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Title: The Struggle Trilogy
Author: Nelson Lowhim
Narrator: Troy Cunningham
Format: Unabridged
Length: 8 hrs and 46 mins
Language: English
Release date: 08-31-16
Publisher: Eiso Publishing
Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 2 votes
Genres: Fiction, Literary
Publisher's Summary:
This is the entire set of The Struggle series. It includes The Struggle, The Struggle Knows Not, and The Logic of Morals. "The struggle knows not the logic of morals" is an Arabic saying.
A man, Walid, lives in Baghdad, where bombs tear apart markets and flesh, Americans shoot at anyone who crosses them and the police are too scared to stop murderers as the streets run red with blood. Walid must protect his family, his neighborhood, from this onslaught of violence. But how? He decides to use his brains and gun.
As a consequence, he dives into the underbelly of a city in the throes of civil war. Fighting other Iraqis and the Americans, Walid must figure out how to live just one more day.
Mohammad, Walid's childhood companion, decides to sell out his friend to get personal justice.
Qassem, an Iranian, trained to work in the shadows for Tehran, plays with men's lives to achieve his goals.
Douglass, an American soldier, dutifully carries out his mission.
Everyone fights to come out on top, but not all of them can survive. Who will make it to see another day?
Members Reviews:
An extraordinary work...
Nelson Lowhim was in the American Army; based on his biography, he did two tours in Iraq and they were not "desk jobs." War has often been described as being one of long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of intense, adrenalin-pumping terror. Lowhim does not appear to have been too bored; in fact, he utilized all that "boring time" to gain an understanding of the people of Iraq, and the social and economic dynamics that were unleashed by the American invasion to remove Saddam Hussein from power. He also learned far more Arabic than most American soldiers learn German if they are stationed in Germany. But what truly makes this an "extra ordinary" work, even a work that is in a class of one, is that while serving as a soldier on one side in a war, he acquired a thorough understanding of the thinking and actions of the other side - enough so, to produce this novel.
There aren't any "good guys" in this tale, and it is definitely not for the "fun-read crowd." I never felt that the horror and the cruelty - like the alternate uses for a power drill- were thrown in for shock effect. No, they were just an integral part of the scene, like the smell of cooked fish in Sadr City, the cheap cologne, the wet dreams and the bank accounts in Dubai. If there is a single protagonist in this tale, it is Walid. He is a Shia, who is deeply disturbed by the car-bomb killings of his brethren by Sunnis. He is also not very happy with the Americans, and joins his older brother Mahmud, in fighting them in Karbala. Mahmud is killed, and will haunt Walid's dreams. Walid has to decide whether he is a coward or a "real man," and accomplishes the latter status the old-fashioned way: by killing another. Bashir is a Lebanese "go-between," which seems to be a national occupation. Qassem is the "face" of Iran, and the bag-man who dispenses the money, and supplies the road-side bombs to Walid, and his nascent group, to be used against the Americans - and pays double for a good video of a successful attack.
Roughly 80% of the novel concerns the Iraqis, the other 20% concerns the Americans. And none of them are portrayed very positively either. Lowhim provides most telling negative details that demonstrate his clear grasp of the underbelly of American culture.