Praise for Deliver Us (Alephactory, 2018)
"Deliver Us is a wild, funny, ridiculous and yet deeply serious novel that imagines a near future in which class, commerce, race, technology, and our ever evolving social politics intersect, and explode. Christopher Robinson and Gavin Kovite are always inventive, always captivating, and always deeply attuned to the strangeness and the beauty of our often dysfunctional culture."
— Phil Klay, National Book Award Winner, author of Redployment
Reviews for War of the Encyclopaedists (Scribner, 2015)
"Spirited...a captivating coming-of-age novel that is, by turns, funny and sad and elegiac — a novel that leaves us with some revealing snapshots of America, both at war and in denial, and some telling portraits of a couple of millennials trying to grope their way toward adulthood."
— Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times, May 12, 2015
“One of the most revealing novels yet about the millennial generation…Recent war fiction—like Kevin Powers’s The Yellow Birds, Phil Klay’s Redeployment, and Ben Fountain’s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk—has accounted for the battleground overseas and at home, but none has focused so incisively on the choice between serving and shopping. Getting drunk at brunch and releasing your gun’s safety. Montauk and Corderoy keep in touch by editing a Wikipedia entry about themselves. What starts off as a fun, absurd exercise grows more poetic and deadly serious…The millennials have gotten a bad reputation for a bewildering sense of self-regard and privilege, their dreams encouraged by their protective parents and discouraged by the recession. And this might be their defining novel—what feels like a human encyclopedia, its opposing entries revealing characters and a country in a confused state of revision following a nonsensical war.”
— Benjamin Percy, Esquire, Apr 20, 2015
"Their stories, doubtlessly informed by the authors’ own respective experiences as an infantry platoon leader and graduate student, are raw and vibrate with authenticity...An epic for the 9/11 generation, War of the Encyclopaedists chronicles the churning uncertainties of new adults, when everything represents possibility or peril."
— Booklist, March 1, 2015
"This extraordinary first novel starts with a shock...The different strands of the novel...are woven together with enormous energy, wit and verve....and we are left in the grip of an extremely moving story that feels as if it has something urgent to say about how we live now... War of the Encylopaedists is a hugely ambitious novel. As its central conceit makes clear, it is about life as an act of collective and self-conscious authorship, an act of authorship that adapts to events as they unfold. It is a conceit nicely echoed in the fact that it has two authors, one of whom has seen active service in Iraq. It is unusual for a work of shared authorship to have such an engaging voice. What is even more unusual is for a work that is partly about irony to have such a big, bold, and sometimes beautiful, heart."
— Christina Patterson, The Sunday Times, May 24, 2015
"The book is a love story, a war story and also a generational one, about coming of age in the time of Wikipedia and YouTube… darkly funny and absurd and terrifying at the same time."
— Jennifer Maloney, Wall Street Journal, May 5, 2015
"War of the Encyclopaedists is eager, ironic, and yet weirdly solemn; like its subject matter it is also massive in scale. In addition to being a novel about the war in Iraq, this is also a novel about Wikipedia, a coming-of-age novel, a campus novel, a book about love, betrayal, friendship, and phonies...the authors ingenuity is everywhere on show."
— Ian Sansom, Times Literary Supplement, June 12, 2015
"The fascination of this terrific coming-of-age novel lies in it having two authors, each taking charge of one side of the story and working from his own experience. There's a slight struggle to be ultra-modern that doesn't hide its solid, old-fashioned excellence."
— The Sunday Times, June 13, 2015.
"Robinson and Kovite write with directness that is not arrogant, cleverness that is not boastful, honesty and insightfulness that promises that wisdom has been attained and life has progressed past the final pages of the written story. You can tell they are poetsbecause of the way lines proceed rhythmically and the way ideas and actions are juxtaposed for exponentially more emotional impact. You can tell they are hipster-millennials because they relish ideas and moments of beauty-ugliness, irony, unconventional perfection, and meaningfully loose ends."
— Amanda Knox, West Seattle Herald, May 28, 2015
"The 20somethings' search for meaning in a time of turmoil can resonate with readers of any generation but especially with those who came of age during the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Bittersweet but ultimately redemptive, the Encyclopaedists' adventures in growing up, romantic failures and gaining perspective may remind readers of the pains and possibilities that are encountered when one makes a way in the world."
— Jaclyn Fulwood, Shelf Awareness, Apr 20, 2015
"It’s an entertaining and insightful story of what it is to be young in America during a time of war...It’s odd to say that a book with war as a principal component is entertaining, but Encyclopaedists is not a traditional war book, perhaps because Iraq was not a traditional war."
— Sean Rose, Kirkus reviews, May 21, 2015
"War of the Encyclopaedists is the extraordinary product of a collaboration between two writers...By the third chapter, there is already more pot, coke, earnest drunk party dialogue, and sex (way more sex) than in all previous Iraq and Afghanistan novels combined. And if this sounds more entertaining than your standard important-yet-dreary war novel, I suspect Kovite and Robinson had the same idea...When alone on the page, each man is distinct in tone and voice, but when they share the stage, the writing seamlessly combines into a unique style of its own...by the end of the book, I stopped asking “Who wrote what?” and instead appreciated “Wow, how did they do that?” ...By placing Mickey and Halifax in separate locations, enduring distinct experiences, their voices can do something amazing: have a completely unpedantic intra-generational conversation...Finally, an Iraq War novel that puts the war in its place, that stays true to the genuine detached reality of America’s experience."
— Brian Castner, The Daily Public, May 13, 2015
"A gripping, thoughtful read...moving and memorable."
— Publishers Weekly, Mar 9, 2015
"Two 'twentysomethings of early-millennium Seattle' take different paths to maturity in this likable, highly readable, double-bylined coming-of-age first novel....Chapters alternate between Corderoy’s ill-prepared and humorous immersion in lit-crit seminars and his friend’s hard-edged life amid the threats and slaughter of insurgency. Both areas have fun with the lingo....The authors give [the] principal women enough of their own growing up to balance all the manning up by the male leads. There are many nice touches in the writing, including a witty show and tell concerning female anatomy at a difficult moment and some Shandy-esque fun with display pages for Wikipedia entries and military forms...The overall narrative's smart and entertaining."
— Starred Review, from Kirkus Reviews, Feb 15, 2015
“[Robinson and Kovite] have taken their individual histories and attitudes and invested them in their two main characters, who are deftly portrayed and a perfect fit for each other. Their story unfolds rapidly, humorously, and convincingly from page one.”
— Library Journal, Feb 15, 2015
"The novel vividly captures the anomie of the lives of young adults, inhabiting worlds that they in some sense have chosen but that have stopped making sense. The narrative moves in counterpoint between the stories of the two men and the worlds they inhabit—academia, with its pretentious intellectual discourse and attenuated human relationships, and the war in Iraq, with its unnerving combination of bureaucracy, boredom, and unpredictable violence...The conceit of the Wikipedia entry is the novel’s most brilliant formal device, for it provides an image of the book’s insight into order and disorder. The book bores into what James calls “the accidental and the arbitrary,” understanding it as the warp and woof from which we weave our lives."
— The Hudson Review, Oct 27, 2015
"Robinson and Kovite met as college students attending a University of Washington-run study abroad program in Rome and they write with a sharp and intelligent voice, albeit one that is frequently congenial, high and horny—to borrow Corderoy’s self-description...One of the novel's strongest aspects is its manifestation of the war stateside, where, despite these protests, the majority of the country has bought into an impossible promise of shock and awe and military might...Ultimately, the book demonstrates that in an amorphous war we can find personal resolutions. What begins as an idealistic lark ends with real heft."
— City Arts Magazine, Jun 25, 2015
Print Interviews
The Kids AREN'T Alright: Phil Klay talks with the Authors of "War of the Encyclopaedists"
— Omnivoracious, The Amazon Book Review, May 19, 2015
Two Novelists Double Down on Iraq War
— The Daily Beast, Interview by Matt Gallagher, Aug 02, 2015
Words After War Interview with Sara Novic
— Huffington Post, Jul 14, 2015
What Isn't Absurd
— New Orleans Review, Interview by Ryan Bubalo, Sep 29, 2015
Radio Interviews
Open Book with Mariella Frostrup (3rd segment of program)
— BBC Radio 4, Jul 23, 2015
Late Night Conversation with Paul Martone
— Late Night Library, Jun 2, 2015
The collaborative novel: Are two (or more!) heads better than one?
— CBC Radio Toronto, Q with Gill Deacon, Sep 14, 2015
Other Press
This Spring's Must-Reads
— Amy Jo Burns, Ploughshares
A Reading List of Modern War Stories
— Michiko Kakutani, New York Times, Dec 25, 2014
From Kazuo Ishiguro and Patrick Hall to Pat Butcher: The books of 2015
— Katy Guest, The Independent, Jan 03, 2015
Most Anticipated Fiction of 2015
— David Abrams, The Quivering Pen, Dec 30, 2014
"Deliver Us is a wild, funny, ridiculous and yet deeply serious novel that imagines a near future in which class, commerce, race, technology, and our ever evolving social politics intersect, and explode. Christopher Robinson and Gavin Kovite are always inventive, always captivating, and always deeply attuned to the strangeness and the beauty of our often dysfunctional culture."
— Phil Klay, National Book Award Winner, author of Redployment
Reviews for War of the Encyclopaedists (Scribner, 2015)
"Spirited...a captivating coming-of-age novel that is, by turns, funny and sad and elegiac — a novel that leaves us with some revealing snapshots of America, both at war and in denial, and some telling portraits of a couple of millennials trying to grope their way toward adulthood."
— Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times, May 12, 2015
“One of the most revealing novels yet about the millennial generation…Recent war fiction—like Kevin Powers’s The Yellow Birds, Phil Klay’s Redeployment, and Ben Fountain’s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk—has accounted for the battleground overseas and at home, but none has focused so incisively on the choice between serving and shopping. Getting drunk at brunch and releasing your gun’s safety. Montauk and Corderoy keep in touch by editing a Wikipedia entry about themselves. What starts off as a fun, absurd exercise grows more poetic and deadly serious…The millennials have gotten a bad reputation for a bewildering sense of self-regard and privilege, their dreams encouraged by their protective parents and discouraged by the recession. And this might be their defining novel—what feels like a human encyclopedia, its opposing entries revealing characters and a country in a confused state of revision following a nonsensical war.”
— Benjamin Percy, Esquire, Apr 20, 2015
"Their stories, doubtlessly informed by the authors’ own respective experiences as an infantry platoon leader and graduate student, are raw and vibrate with authenticity...An epic for the 9/11 generation, War of the Encyclopaedists chronicles the churning uncertainties of new adults, when everything represents possibility or peril."
— Booklist, March 1, 2015
"This extraordinary first novel starts with a shock...The different strands of the novel...are woven together with enormous energy, wit and verve....and we are left in the grip of an extremely moving story that feels as if it has something urgent to say about how we live now... War of the Encylopaedists is a hugely ambitious novel. As its central conceit makes clear, it is about life as an act of collective and self-conscious authorship, an act of authorship that adapts to events as they unfold. It is a conceit nicely echoed in the fact that it has two authors, one of whom has seen active service in Iraq. It is unusual for a work of shared authorship to have such an engaging voice. What is even more unusual is for a work that is partly about irony to have such a big, bold, and sometimes beautiful, heart."
— Christina Patterson, The Sunday Times, May 24, 2015
"The book is a love story, a war story and also a generational one, about coming of age in the time of Wikipedia and YouTube… darkly funny and absurd and terrifying at the same time."
— Jennifer Maloney, Wall Street Journal, May 5, 2015
"War of the Encyclopaedists is eager, ironic, and yet weirdly solemn; like its subject matter it is also massive in scale. In addition to being a novel about the war in Iraq, this is also a novel about Wikipedia, a coming-of-age novel, a campus novel, a book about love, betrayal, friendship, and phonies...the authors ingenuity is everywhere on show."
— Ian Sansom, Times Literary Supplement, June 12, 2015
"The fascination of this terrific coming-of-age novel lies in it having two authors, each taking charge of one side of the story and working from his own experience. There's a slight struggle to be ultra-modern that doesn't hide its solid, old-fashioned excellence."
— The Sunday Times, June 13, 2015.
"Robinson and Kovite write with directness that is not arrogant, cleverness that is not boastful, honesty and insightfulness that promises that wisdom has been attained and life has progressed past the final pages of the written story. You can tell they are poetsbecause of the way lines proceed rhythmically and the way ideas and actions are juxtaposed for exponentially more emotional impact. You can tell they are hipster-millennials because they relish ideas and moments of beauty-ugliness, irony, unconventional perfection, and meaningfully loose ends."
— Amanda Knox, West Seattle Herald, May 28, 2015
"The 20somethings' search for meaning in a time of turmoil can resonate with readers of any generation but especially with those who came of age during the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Bittersweet but ultimately redemptive, the Encyclopaedists' adventures in growing up, romantic failures and gaining perspective may remind readers of the pains and possibilities that are encountered when one makes a way in the world."
— Jaclyn Fulwood, Shelf Awareness, Apr 20, 2015
"It’s an entertaining and insightful story of what it is to be young in America during a time of war...It’s odd to say that a book with war as a principal component is entertaining, but Encyclopaedists is not a traditional war book, perhaps because Iraq was not a traditional war."
— Sean Rose, Kirkus reviews, May 21, 2015
"War of the Encyclopaedists is the extraordinary product of a collaboration between two writers...By the third chapter, there is already more pot, coke, earnest drunk party dialogue, and sex (way more sex) than in all previous Iraq and Afghanistan novels combined. And if this sounds more entertaining than your standard important-yet-dreary war novel, I suspect Kovite and Robinson had the same idea...When alone on the page, each man is distinct in tone and voice, but when they share the stage, the writing seamlessly combines into a unique style of its own...by the end of the book, I stopped asking “Who wrote what?” and instead appreciated “Wow, how did they do that?” ...By placing Mickey and Halifax in separate locations, enduring distinct experiences, their voices can do something amazing: have a completely unpedantic intra-generational conversation...Finally, an Iraq War novel that puts the war in its place, that stays true to the genuine detached reality of America’s experience."
— Brian Castner, The Daily Public, May 13, 2015
"A gripping, thoughtful read...moving and memorable."
— Publishers Weekly, Mar 9, 2015
"Two 'twentysomethings of early-millennium Seattle' take different paths to maturity in this likable, highly readable, double-bylined coming-of-age first novel....Chapters alternate between Corderoy’s ill-prepared and humorous immersion in lit-crit seminars and his friend’s hard-edged life amid the threats and slaughter of insurgency. Both areas have fun with the lingo....The authors give [the] principal women enough of their own growing up to balance all the manning up by the male leads. There are many nice touches in the writing, including a witty show and tell concerning female anatomy at a difficult moment and some Shandy-esque fun with display pages for Wikipedia entries and military forms...The overall narrative's smart and entertaining."
— Starred Review, from Kirkus Reviews, Feb 15, 2015
“[Robinson and Kovite] have taken their individual histories and attitudes and invested them in their two main characters, who are deftly portrayed and a perfect fit for each other. Their story unfolds rapidly, humorously, and convincingly from page one.”
— Library Journal, Feb 15, 2015
"The novel vividly captures the anomie of the lives of young adults, inhabiting worlds that they in some sense have chosen but that have stopped making sense. The narrative moves in counterpoint between the stories of the two men and the worlds they inhabit—academia, with its pretentious intellectual discourse and attenuated human relationships, and the war in Iraq, with its unnerving combination of bureaucracy, boredom, and unpredictable violence...The conceit of the Wikipedia entry is the novel’s most brilliant formal device, for it provides an image of the book’s insight into order and disorder. The book bores into what James calls “the accidental and the arbitrary,” understanding it as the warp and woof from which we weave our lives."
— The Hudson Review, Oct 27, 2015
"Robinson and Kovite met as college students attending a University of Washington-run study abroad program in Rome and they write with a sharp and intelligent voice, albeit one that is frequently congenial, high and horny—to borrow Corderoy’s self-description...One of the novel's strongest aspects is its manifestation of the war stateside, where, despite these protests, the majority of the country has bought into an impossible promise of shock and awe and military might...Ultimately, the book demonstrates that in an amorphous war we can find personal resolutions. What begins as an idealistic lark ends with real heft."
— City Arts Magazine, Jun 25, 2015
Print Interviews
The Kids AREN'T Alright: Phil Klay talks with the Authors of "War of the Encyclopaedists"
— Omnivoracious, The Amazon Book Review, May 19, 2015
Two Novelists Double Down on Iraq War
— The Daily Beast, Interview by Matt Gallagher, Aug 02, 2015
Words After War Interview with Sara Novic
— Huffington Post, Jul 14, 2015
What Isn't Absurd
— New Orleans Review, Interview by Ryan Bubalo, Sep 29, 2015
Radio Interviews
Open Book with Mariella Frostrup (3rd segment of program)
— BBC Radio 4, Jul 23, 2015
Late Night Conversation with Paul Martone
— Late Night Library, Jun 2, 2015
The collaborative novel: Are two (or more!) heads better than one?
— CBC Radio Toronto, Q with Gill Deacon, Sep 14, 2015
Other Press
This Spring's Must-Reads
— Amy Jo Burns, Ploughshares
A Reading List of Modern War Stories
— Michiko Kakutani, New York Times, Dec 25, 2014
From Kazuo Ishiguro and Patrick Hall to Pat Butcher: The books of 2015
— Katy Guest, The Independent, Jan 03, 2015
Most Anticipated Fiction of 2015
— David Abrams, The Quivering Pen, Dec 30, 2014