Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Interview

In a letter to readers, Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya compares his novel, The Watch, to Sophocles' classic Greek tragedy Antigone, and considers how war has changed (and stayed the same) over the centuries.

In a letter to readers, Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya compares his novel, The Watch, to Sophocles' classic Greek tragedy Antigone, and considers how war has changed (and stayed the same) over the centuries.

Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya on The Watch

The decade-long war in Afghanistan is America's longest war, Britain's most expensive war since World War II, and NATO's first major war outside Europe.

In terms of casualties, the U.S. and U.K. apart, the Afghan theater has seen Canada's highest combat casualties since the Korean War; Australia's highest combat casualties since Vietnam; France's highest combat casualties since Algeria; the highest combat casualties for Germany, Italy, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden since World War II; the highest combat casualties for the Netherlands since the Dutch withdrew from Indonesia in 1949; the highest combat fatalities for Spain since the Ifni War in Morocco in 1958; and the highest combat casualties for Poland in a foreign war since World War II. As for Afghan civilian and military casualties, we have no definite numbers.

When I set out to write The Watch, I wanted to give voice to the statistics, especially those counted as collateral damage in our foreign wars of choice. I decided ...