A NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR:

The Washington Post - NPR - The Christian Science Monitor - Military Times

One could argue that the most vital literary terrain in America's overseas wars is now occupied not by journalists but by novelists...Elliot Ackerman is certainly one of those novelists...He has created people who are not the equivalents of the locally exotic subjects in your average NPR story, and he has used them to populate a fascinating and topical novel. -Lawrence Osborne, New York Times Book Review

Ackerman, who lives in Istanbul and has written some fine reportage from the Turkish borderlands, knows Gaziantep well and sharply depicts its incongruities . . . He shows boldness and empathy in trying to envision modern conflagrations from foreign vantage points. -Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal

Ackerman's eye for detail grounds this novel in a space that quickly transports readers into a world few Americans know . . . Dark at the Crossing is not only a fictional meditation on remorse, betrayal, love and loss, but also a journey that returns us to the beautiful and broken world we live in. -Washington Post

Dark at the Crossing promises to be one of the most essential books of 2017. -Esquire

Visceral, unsentimental and in a style that begs to be underlined and savored, this is a novel about how people carry the emotional and physical scars of war through their lives, and how war both demolishes and becomes home . . . The many references to actual street and district names, smells and unique predicaments, such as underfunded, understaffed hospitals that are teeming with refugees, heighten the book's authenticity and earnestness. -Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Dark at the Crossing is every bit as taut and harrowing as the place it depicts, a region where fifteen years of relentless war play out in filthy refugee camps and upscale shopping malls. Elliot Ackerman has written a brilliant, admirably merciless novel of broken lives, broken places, and good intentions gone awry. -Ben Fountain, author of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

Infused with profound knowledge, empathy, and chutzpah, Ackerman's writing is hauntingly evocative and beautiful. It is a rare writer who is not afraid to deal with the toughest conflicts, ask the hardest questions, show the darkest side of even heroes, and still manage to renew our faith in humanity. -Elif Shafak, author of The Bastard of Istanbul

Here is a thriller, psychological fiction, political intrigue, and even a love story all wrapped into a stunningly realistic and sometimes horrifying package. Put Ackerman on the A-list. -Library Journal (starred)

Elliot Ackerman's quietly subversive sensibilities make him one of the most potent and original writers to emerge from that elite platoon of men and women who, since 9/11, have laid down their guns to pick up a pen. Once again, here in his second novel, Dark at the Crossing, Ackerman insists American readers immerse themselves in the humanity of their country's enemies and victims. His work is a unique and bittersweet blessing of raw grace and naked, bleeding empathy. -Bob Shacochis, author of The Woman Who Lost Her Soul

Once again, Elliot Ackerman dares to imagine his way into the minds, lives, and fates of people too many American writers would judge as inaccessible-perhaps even forbidden. The result is a book whose emotional acuity is matched only by its literary artistry. They don't award medals of valor to novelists, but while reading this book I often thought, Maybe they should. -Tom Bissell, author of Apostle: Travels Among the Tombs of the Twelve

Ackerman has done a masterful job of creating a novel of ideas that invites thoughtful consideration of the folly and futility of war and the failure of idealism . . . The text is beautifully written, and the rendering of the setting is superb.