http://www.wnyc.org/shows/lopate/2012/jul/02/alex-gilvarrys-em-memoirs-non-enemy-combatantem/

Entrance to the event.

The evening began with some major chit-chatting and wine sipping as guests arrived and either found old friends, or met new ones. There were delicious cheeses and fruit provided, and the cute bartender served up vineyard stories and delectable wine samples at a side table.

Bonding over good wine

Terry Moore (aka cute bartender) in action.

Soon, our guest of honor Alex Gilvarry arrived, every bit as charming – and fashion savy! – as his book promised. After Jo and YEB member Aisha spoke briefly of BtheB’s mission, Alex performed a beautiful reading of his novel: From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant is an unlikely story of an up-and-coming Filipino fashion designer, trying to make it on the runways of New York, who accidentally ends up in Guantanamo. Afterwards, we all swarmed to the book signing table, caught hook line and sinker by his snappy style and the sheer quirkiness of the premise.

Alex reading from his novel.

The night ended with an exciting raffle, which included fabulous prizes such as a brownie tin voucher from The Midnight Chef, great books, and gift cards.

We would like to give a special thanks to everyone who came out in support of Behind the Book. It was all of you who made the evening special, and you guys make it possible for us to do the work we do. Thank you also to Alex for a wonderful reading, and of course our lovely sponsors, the Moore Brothers Wine Company (which is so cool it only donates this event space to non-profits for fundraising events) and The Midnight Chef, for the great prizes, drinks, and space. Cheers!

Mica with The Midnight Chef.

What do you get when you mix the New York fashion scene with al-Qaeda? You get a darkly humorous novel that delves into the paranoia that gripped the US in the months and years following 9/11. From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant is just that, as it follows Boyet Hernandez, a Filipino designer who has come to New York to make a name for himself and his clothing line (B)oy.

Boy runs into problems immediately upon arrival in the US. He has big dreams and talent to back them up, but not the funding. Just as he imagines he may never have the backing he needs to make the clothing line he has envisioned, a chance encounter with a neighbor changes his world. What Boy is too naïve to realize is that this new benefactor, with an apartment full of fertilizer, may not be funding his clothing line out of sheer love for his design aesthetic. Boy doesn’t see that he is being used as a front for much more sinister works.

We learn of Boy’s New York exploits as he writes about them from his tiny cell in No Man’s Land, (ie: Guantanamo Bay) where he is being held and interrogated, without having been arrested and without access to a lawyer. On yellow legal pad after yellow legal pad, Boy walks his interrogator (and us) through those early days in the United States. We see how much he loves the US, how entirely focused he is on clothing design and how he was too self-absorbed to realize what was going on around him.

Boyet is a likeable protagonist. He is embroiled in a mess well-beyond his understanding, and yet he tries to make sense of it by pulling forth his own renderings of history, philosophy and literature, usually butchering these references beyond belief. (The footnotes throughout the tale help sort out the points he is trying to make.) My favorite of these ill-guided attempts at allusion is when he tries to make a connection to the works of 19th century Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky, saying he particularly liked the one about the idiot, if only he could remember the title!  This just puts a stamp on Boyet’s incredible nativity and innocence as he is being accused of the heinous and horrible acts.

I really like that this book breaks out of the conventional novel box. I like that it is Boyet’s own “confession,” written while held captive, bookended by a prologue and afterward by a reporter wishing to make the story known. This organization pushes the reader to imagine how such unwarranted detentions were (and still are) possible in a country where we say we prize freedom and the rule of law, but we are so afraid of terrorists getting the upper hand that those sentiments can be easily swept under the carpet in the name of protecting the homeland.  Boy’s story is a fictional one, but it does force the reader to stop and consider how close to reality certain aspects may be treading.

A unique style, coupled with a tale that weaves fashion and ethics together earns Alex Gilvarry’s novel From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant:

POLITICS and fashion are not mutually exclusive interests—a person might pledge to ProPublica only to enjoy a Style.com slideshow moments later. In literature, however, they tend to make strange bedfellows. So it’s with great pleasure that we read Alex Gilvarry’s funny debut novel, “From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant”, which cleverly entwines these seemingly disparate fictional worlds.

All it takes is one error in judgment to sweep Boy Hernadez, a newly minted Filipino fashion designer, away from Bryant Park and into No Man’s Land—Mr Gilvarry’s fictionalised Guantanamo. The book is a post-modern mash-up of Boy’s flamboyant confession, a reporter’s mocking footnotes and some false documents.

This book is a unique satire of the topsy-turvy times immediately following the September 11th attacks. Mr Gilvarry spoke to us about mid-aughts Manhattan, the post-9/11 novel and the hazards of certain proper nouns.

Read more.

Please come out on Thursday, March 8th, to hear some wonderful work and support a great cause.

KGB Bar

1. Writer Alex Gilvarry explains how he got his inspiration from the fashion world and the world of politics for his book “From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant.”

2. NYU writing teacher Christopher Bram talks about the gay writers who helped shape America following WWII. His new book is “Eminent Outlaws.”

3. Bruce Fisher, executive Director of Huckleberry Youth Programs, and Ramses Munoz, Community Health Educator for Huckleberry, discuss the various programs and services offered to young people 12-18, parents, educators, and schools.

1. Writer Alex Gilvarry explains how he got his inspiration from the fashion world and the world of politics for his book “From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant.”

2. NYU writing teacher Christopher Bram talks about the gay writers who helped shape America following WWII. His new book is “Eminent Outlaws.”

3. Bruce Fisher, executive Director of Huckleberry Youth Programs, and Ramses Munoz, Community Health Educator for Huckleberry, discuss the various programs and services offered to young people 12-18, parents, educators, and schools.

In Alex Gilvarry’s first novel From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant, his main character, Boyet Hernandez, is accused of terrorism and thrown into Guantánamo Bay.  The kicker is that Boy is a fashion designer from the Philippines who loves America and would never even hurt a fly.  Gilvarry uses irony and absurdity in his timely debut, while at the same time he shows the injustice of detaining and imprisoning many so-called “enemy” combatants who are anything but. Everything leads up to the “Overwhelming Event,” when government officials burst into his apartment in the middle of the night.

For the first 274 pages, Boy presents us a memoir of his time in New York City, the capital of the fashion world, and how he became a prisoner at Gitmo.   Boy, though, assures us he would never “raise a hand in anger against America.”  He loves America, “the golden bastard.”  It is, he surmises, where he is born again, “propelled through the duct of JFK International, out the rotating doors, push, push, dripping a post-U.S. Customs sweat” down his back, and “slithering out” on his feet on a curb in Queens.  Even after he is unfairly imprisoned, Boy still loves America and Americans: “And even after the torment they’ve put me through—tossing me into this little cell in No Man’s Land—would you believe that I still hold America close to my heart?”

Gilvarry gives us wonderful foreshadowing when Boy arrives in New York on September 13, 2002, exactly one year and two days after the 9/11 terrorist attack.  Boy seeks out the Statue of Liberty, that New York landmark symbolic of freedom for all.  His spirits slump when he sees “she was in mourning.”  A “black veil” covers the face of Lady Liberty.  The Statue of Liberty is undergoing restoration at the time of Boy’s arrival and is closed.  Therefore, Boy does not see her in all her glory.  She does not welcome him as he thinks she will.  This does not bode well for Boy.

More than anything in the world, Boy wants to become a great fashion designer.  He admires Coco Chanel and is a little jealous of Philip Tang, his rival back in fashion school in the Philippines who has made quite a name for himself in fashion.  Boy’s problem is that he has little money.  He meets a man in the same building he lives in, Ahmed Qureshi, who tells Boy that he is from Canada.  Qureshi asks Boy to make two suits for him; Qureshi likes the suits so much that he offers to provide Boy the capital he needs to start his own business: (B)oy.  Of course, Boy accepts.  Ultimately, Boy succeeds; his business thrives and anybody who is anyone wants to wear his clothes.

Gilvarry shows us the innocence of Boy, even in a city like New York.  Boy does not question where Qureshi gets his money.  When Qureshi obviously makes things up to explain away his business ventures, Boy accepts.  Boy desperately needs the money, you see, and how Qureshi gets it is of little interest to him.

One day, Boy goes to Qureshi’s.  He needs yet more money because Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman order a new line.  Qureshi has bags and bags of fertilizer in his apartment.  This would certainly tip me off, but not Boy.  It is almost comical how he does not see what is right under his nose.  Boy explains, “Now from the perspective of an innocent man—my perspective—there was nothing too unusual about this.  Ahmed always had things in bulk coming and going.”

Imagine Boy’s surprise when Qureshi is picked up for being an arms dealer!  But Gilvarry takes it even further.  Qureshi tries to save himself.  He is not a terrorist, he is not planning on blowing up America, oh no. Qureshi instead accuses Boy and tells the government that Boy is behind it all.  Qureshi claims Boy is masquerading as a fashion designer so he can blow up everyone during Fashion Week.  That Boy’s publicist is named Ben Laden does not help matters either.

And so it happens–in the middle of the night, government officials come for Boy.  They put a black bag over his head and do not ask questions.  Within just a few days, authorities have Boy in prison in No Man’s Land in Gitmo.  His cries of innocence fall on deaf ears.  His captors are convinced that Boy is lying and is, in fact, the mastermind of a proposed terrorist plot.  There is a lot of hilarity here, especially when Boy’s ex writes a play about him, starring Lou Diamond Phillips.

If the plot sounds absurd to you, that is the point.  The story is absurd and mirrors our recent history when this very thing occurred.  Gilvarry may write with irreverence but he also makes a statement, and a very strong one at that.  His use of satire works well here.  Boy, a diminutive fashion designer from the Philippines, who loves America, a terrorist?  The premise is almost laughable, but, in Gilvarry’s hands, it becomes more than simple comedy.  Boy symbolizes those non-enemy combatants thrown into prison and left there unjustly and without cause.  Gilvarry is not ridiculing the War on Terror; instead, he shows us how foolish our own government is to hunt down people like Boy when real terrorists run around freely.

Because Gilvarry structures his novel as a memoir, the book has all the elements of a real memoir: an introduction, footnotes, and an afterword.  Boy’s voice stops at page 274, and Gil Johannessen’s takes over.  Johannessen is the editor of Boy’s book.  I find I do not like the end of the book.  I miss Boy’s distinctive voice.  I do not know Johannessen; I do not trust him like I trust Boy; I do not connect with him like I connect with Boy.

Johannessen tells the rest of Boy’s story.  I wish Gilvarry had not chosen to end like this.  In the afterword, Boy has changed.  He has returned to Manila and is cross-dressing in an attempt to confuse anyone who might be following him.  Boy has been through a lot, and Gilvarry shows us how paranoid and afraid Boy has become.  He is not the same man who cut off the sleeves of his orange jumpsuit to make it more fashionable.

Although I do not care for the end, it does nothing to dampen my spirit for this timely debut.  Gilvarry proves he is an up-and-coming author with From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant.

02/21/2012 6:00 pm

Alex Gilvarry presents his novel From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant ($26.95), a Signed First Editions Club selection. Boyet Hernandez is a small man with a big American dream when he arrives in New York in 2002, fresh out of design school in Manila. He sets up shop in a Brooklyn factory, but mere weeks later, there’s a knock on the door: the flamboyant Boyet is brought to Gitmo, handed a Koran, and locked away indefinitely.

Location:
1 Ferry Building
San Francisco, California
94111
United States

From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant (Hardcover)
By Alex Gilvarry
$26.95
ISBN-13: 9780670023196
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Viking Adult, 1/2012

Review by Jon Reiss

From the Memiors of  a Non-Enemy Combatant
by Alex Gilvarry
(Viking, 320 p.)

From the Memiors of  a Non-Enemy Combatant is the story of Boyet (Boy for short) Hernandez, a Philippine-born aspiring designer who, having grown up in admiration of his fabric slinging uncle, lusts for a future as New York’s most desirable, heterosexual male clothing designer (of which there area bout 10.)  Living off a meager allowance from his parents, Boy is barely able to afford an apartment in Bushwick.   Meanwhile he yearns for success. To him, this means — among other things — an apartment on the illustrious streets of Williamsburg.  Stranded in Bushwick, far from the glamour of the fashion world, he comes into contact with a seemingly affable if not mercurial fabric salesman named Ahemd who commissions him to make a pair of suits, eventually offering to fund his entire debut clothing line.  Boy’s desire for success is so that he accepts Ahmed’s offer despite looming doubts and distrust of his methods.  As Boy’s dreams begin to come to fruition, the stage is set for his eventual downfall, one that results in him being stranded in a government facility for detainees far more remote than the Kosciuszko stop on the J train.  Writing this tale as a long form confession from the offshore facility nicknamed “No Man’s Land” Boy is forced to come to terms with the fact that the decisions made to bolster his (B)oy fashion label also resulted in the new, notorious label bestowed upon him by the media: “The Fashion Terrorist.”

Switching from descriptions of the pseudo-bohemian life of a allowance-receiving, aspiring artist who lives in Bushwick and dates a girl at Sarah Lawrence to the life of a detained enemy-of-the-state awaiting tribunal, FMOANEC is delivered with a precise and trenchant eye for satire.  From his girlfriend with a penchant for gratuitous use of the word, “random,” to Boy’s attempt at cutting the sleeves of his orange detainee jumpsuit in order to use the extra fabric to taper his pants, to Boy’s publicist who cannot get on a plane because his name is Ben Laden, the fashion industry, the post 9/11 US government, and the lives of bohemian hipsters are given a solid tussle.

“I know this all sounds sophomoric but such is the fashion industry.”

Littered with footnotes that come from an unidentified, presumably government-affiliated source, FMOANEC is unique in its narrative delivery. It seems a trend lately for novels to employ narrators that aren’t taken especially seriously, often unreliable, but not on purpose. Though Gilvarry’s protagonist seems at times naive and self-involved, his foibles are presented so as not to be poked fun at or judged, but merely to show how one, when driven, can become wrapped up in an extraordinarily fucked-up situation.  Even if the satire of the fashion industry doesn’t compel you, nor a send-up of the Williamsburg trust-fund hipster lifestyle, or even a critique the hyper paranoid post-9/11 anti terrorism effort, FMOANEC as a book about ambition and desire is worth its weight.

Plainly put, Gilvarry’s debut novel is an absolute breath of fresh air for two major reasons.  From The Memoiors of a Non Enemy Combatant feels like the first novel with substantial buzz to come along in quite some time that doesn’t try and wow the reader with the author’s intelligence.  Not to say that GIlvarry’s intelligence doesn’t shine through, but it’s understated, and not delivered via injections of incremental quirk in the protagonists voice.  Also, while FMOANEC isn’t entirely reliant on plot, there’s plenty of plot to speak of.   Though the plot is delivered in a way that isn’t entirely conventional structurally, we’re still being taken for a ride here, one which, even if the subjects mentioned (Fashion, post 9/11 paranoia) on the back cover don’t grab you, quickly proves itself well worth taking.

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Fashion as fodder: Alex Gilvarry lampoons the ‘memoir’ of an upstart designer

Lucas Jackson/Reuters

Models present creations at the Derek Lam Fall/Winter 2011 collection during New York Fashion Week February 13, 2011.

Subcultures of enthusiasts and aficionados, be they cryptographers or physicists (ahem, The Big Bang Theory) are easily lampooned, especially by outsiders — take an element of truth and amplify it to caricature. And fashion, by virtue of its visual layer of ridiculousness, is an even easier target, especially when you consider the purple prose and often impenetrable jargon.

In Alex Gilvarry’s debut novel, From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant,Women’s Wear Daily calls its young protagonist’s first collection of see-through burkas and pasties “a Bildungsroman.” I write about fashion and I don’t even know what they mean, and that’s the point.

The speaking in riddles worthy of Lewis Carroll, interludes with fashion’sJabberwocky of nonsense words and tautologies (“I thought a political message in the collection would be appropriate since we’re living in such a political time with the war on terror and everything”) are how Gilvarry blends his serious commentary with satire. He recounts the tale of a 25-year-old aspiring fashion designer from Manila who arrives in post-9/11 New York like a fame-seeking missile, but ends up in solitary confinement awaiting trial, extradition — or worse.

A faux “Acknowledgements” section sets up the conceit, introducing the first-person novel that follows as the confession of one Boyet R. Hernandez, written from June to November 2006. Boy thanks his fashion publicist Ben Laden (“no relation”) and a handful of designer superstars — “Coco, Yves, Karl” — the first-name basis coyly implying intimate acquaintance. My first chuckle came not from this self-aggrandizement so typical of fashion-speak, however, but from the model-friends our hero later thanks, the litany of Olyas, Anyas, Dashas and Irinas that have lately sprung from Eastern Europe to dominate international runways.

From its first pages, From the Memoirs of Non-Enemy Combatant reminded me ofFabulous Nobodies, a gorgeously barbed satire of the downtown New York fashion scene in the late 1980s for which I have a lot of affection. Boy’s Holy Grail is his own label hanging at Barneys — a fame he believes can be attained if he could just stage his own runway show at Fashion Week in Bryant Park.

At the beginning of the novel, Boy is typically wide-eyed. “New York’s subway system is a rubber band of sexual tension, stretched and twined around the boroughs, ready to snap,” he recalls, before enumerating the denizens who orbit the micro-world of the various L stops.

What follows is less a confession than a retrospective declaration of innocence, and some things Gilvarry gets just right — such as the ease with which a persistent, vaguely promising designer who has yet to deliver a finished collection can, with the right connections, worm his way into a fashion magazine profile. Gilvarry chose an interesting time in U.S. policy but also in fashion because that’s when the slow revitalization of Seventh Avenue ready-to-wear began, as did the scrum to be the “next big thing” and the rise of Asian-American designers such as Derek Lam, Alexander Wang, Doo-Ri Chung and Jason Wu.

Although Gilvarry name-drops real fashion people and places, it’s not quite a roman à clef. In some parts there seem to be just surface understanding of what’s involved in designing and sewing, perhaps a result of too much Project Runway viewing.

And yet some of the satirical elements are so spot-on — such as Boy’s frenemy, the fellow wunderkind Filipino designer behind a label called Philip Tang 2.0. Other knowing winks of composite characters skewer personalities that only industry insiders would recognize, such as the sex-mad creative director at Barneys.

If it’s not exactly Louis Auchincloss, the novel hits several snide bull’s eyes about the vapidity and morality of fashion — until the Gitmo stuff pokes in, that is. The confession is written while Boy is incarcerated by the U.S. government in a location that strongly evokes Guantanamo Bay, after what he dubs the “Overwhelming Event.”

One night, agents break down Boy’s door and he is hooded, drugged and taken into custody, detained for months without due process as a fashion terrorist. Authorities insist that Boy and Ahmed, his dubious backing investor, were involved in arms deal with Somalis.

With this turn of events, the novel’s tone changes from a fashion industry Candide to experiences in solitary confinement and is less subtle. A plum opportunity to bring the two disparate points together is missed, too — that Coco Chanel was involved with a Nazi officer in occupied France and certainly facilitated certain covert events, a fact long believed and that a historian substantiated with documents last year, is deserving only more than a footnote. It’s one of the many annotations throughout Boy’s confession that elaborate and clarify on the facts he presents, clearly in hindsight, and reduce him to an unreliable narrator.

I’m not sure the juxtaposition works. It certainly stops being funny, but I’m not sure this is exactly what fashion types mean when we ask to be taken seriously.

In Alex Gilvarry’s debut novel, From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant, Women’s Wear Daily calls its young protagonist’s first collection of see-through burkas and pasties “a Bildungsroman.” I write about fashion and I don’t even know what they mean, and that’s the point.

The speaking in riddles worthy of Lewis Carroll, interludes with fashion’s Jabberwocky of nonsense words and tautologies (“I thought a political message in the collection would be appropriate since we’re living in such a political time with the war on terror and everything”) are how Gilvarry blends his serious commentary with satire. He recounts the tale of a 25-year-old aspiring fashion designer from Manila who arrives in post-9/11 New York like a fame-seeking missile, but ends up in solitary confinement awaiting trial, extradition — or worse.

A faux “Acknowledgements” section sets up the conceit, introducing the first-person novel that follows as the confession of one Boyet R. Hernandez, written from June to November 2006. Boy thanks his fashion publicist Ben Laden (“no relation”) and a handful of designer superstars — “Coco, Yves, Karl” — the first-name basis coyly implying intimate acquaintance. My first chuckle came not from this self-aggrandizement so typical of fashion-speak, however, but from the model-friends our hero later thanks, the litany of Olyas, Anyas, Dashas and Irinas that have lately sprung from Eastern Europe to dominate international runways.

From its first pages, From the Memoirs of Non-Enemy Combatant reminded me of Fabulous Nobodies, a gorgeously barbed satire of the downtown New York fashion scene in the late 1980s for which I have a lot of affection. Boy’s Holy Grail is his own label hanging at Barneys — a fame he believes can be attained if he could just stage his own runway show at Fashion Week in Bryant Park.

At the beginning of the novel, Boy is typically wide-eyed. “New York’s subway system is a rubber band of sexual tension, stretched and twined around the boroughs, ready to snap,” he recalls, before enumerating the denizens who orbit the micro-world of the various L stops.

What follows is less a confession than a retrospective declaration of innocence, and some things Gilvarry gets just right — such as the ease with which a persistent, vaguely promising designer who has yet to deliver a finished collection can, with the right connections, worm his way into a fashion magazine profile. Gilvarry chose an interesting time in U.S. policy but also in fashion because that’s when the slow revitalization of Seventh Avenue ready-to-wear began, as did the scrum to be the “next big thing” and the rise of Asian-American designers such as Derek Lam, Alexander Wang, Doo-Ri Chung and Jason Wu.

Although Gilvarry name-drops real fashion people and places, it’s not quite a roman à clef. In some parts there seem to be just surface understanding of what’s involved in designing and sewing, perhaps a result of too much Project Runway viewing.

And yet some of the satirical elements are so spot-on — such as Boy’s frenemy, the fellow wunderkind Filipino designer behind a label called Philip Tang 2.0. Other knowing winks of composite characters skewer personalities that only industry insiders would recognize, such as the sex-mad creative director at Barneys.

If it’s not exactly Louis Auchincloss, the novel hits several snide bull’s eyes about the vapidity and morality of fashion — until the Gitmo stuff pokes in, that is. The confession is written while Boy is incarcerated by the U.S. government in a location that strongly evokes Guantanamo Bay, after what he dubs the “Overwhelming Event.”

One night, agents break down Boy’s door and he is hooded, drugged and taken into custody, detained for months without due process as a fashion terrorist. Authorities insist that Boy and Ahmed, his dubious backing investor, were involved in arms deal with Somalis.

With this turn of events, the novel’s tone changes from a fashion industry Candide to experiences in solitary confinement and is less subtle. A plum opportunity to bring the two disparate points together is missed, too — that Coco Chanel was involved with a Nazi officer in occupied France and certainly facilitated certain covert events, a fact long believed and that a historian substantiated with documents last year, is deserving only more than a footnote. It’s one of the many annotations throughout Boy’s confession that elaborate and clarify on the facts he presents, clearly in hindsight, and reduce him to an unreliable narrator.

I’m not sure the juxtaposition works. It certainly stops being funny, but I’m not sure this is exactly what fashion types mean when we ask to be taken seriously.

• From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant by Alex Gilvarry is available from Viking ($28.50).

Zach Baron had heard rumors of a high school football rivalry between Jim Carroll and Gil Scott-Heron.  He discusses it at The Daily.

• Alex Gilvarry talks to NPR about From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant. 

• Edith Wharton: born into wealth, great writer, kinda awkward.

• Pay attention to this Leonard Cohen kid who has a poem in this week’s New Yorker.  He’s gonna be huge.

• We’re living in William Gibson’s future.  The New York Times on Gibson’s Distrust That Particular Flavor.

• At Slate: Matthew Yglesias takes a look at the book The Age of Austerity: How Scarcity Will Remake American Politics.

• Listen to some new Dirty Three.

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Got tips for Bites?  Info@Vol1brooklyn.com

Alex Gilvarry’s From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant doesn’t come out until January, but if you listen to the testimonials in the book trailer, you’ll hear the likes of Howard Kaminsky and Seth Fishman (Gilvarry’s agent) already singing the book’s praises. It’s the best book trailer we’ve seen since Lowboy.

From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant was sold at auction to Viking and is a B&N Discover and Indie Next Pick.

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