Northern Lights

'Calling Tim O'Brien a Vietnam War novelist is a bit like saying Joseph Conrad was a Polish guy who wrote some good sea tales.'

Esquire Winner of the National Book Award (Going After Cacciato), Time Book of the Year (In the Lake of the Woods) and twice runner-up for the Pulitzer (The Things They Carried and In the Lake of the Woods), Tim O'Brien is widely regarded as the finest American writer of the Vietnam generation.

Northern Lights, originally published in 1975, was O'Brien's first full novel, resoundingly confirming the reputation gained by his remarkable debut, If I Die in a Combat Zone - the fictionalised account of his own tour of duty in Vietnam. As in his recent bestselling novel In the Lake of the Woods, the action in Northern Lights takes place not in Vietnam but back in the USA, as Tim O'Brien explores the after-effects of that war - on those who served, and those they left behind.

Set in the frozen wilderness of north Minnesota, it concerns two brothers, one who served in Vietnam, and has returned tough, cynical and world-weary; and the other who stayed at home. When they take off on a long skiing trip together through the frozen woods, they quickly get lost in a blizzard, and are tested to their limits as they face a battle against the elements and each other.