 Welcome to Church of the Chair where war is hell. I'm your host E and today we're keeping our sites clean and our booty holes clenched. Today we're talking about The Sojourn by Andrew Kravak, a nominee for the National Book Award in 2011. Over the next few years I plan to read and review all of the shortlisted nominees and the winners of the National Book Awards. I already started with Buddha in the Attic by Julia Otsuka. If you're interested in that review I'll leave a link at the end of the video. The Sojourn is a story about a young man's journey through war. It takes place during the Great War or World War I. While the main character Andre Vinik was born in America in Pueblo Colorado, him and his father move him at a very early age to Austria-Hungary just before World War I begins. As a boy Andre is taught how to hunt and survive out in the wilderness by his shepherd father. His coming of age story is enthralling. Every single word, every sentence, every paragraph was absolutely beautifully written and I can see why it was a nominee for the National Book Award. Now the book is cut up into I would say four different parts. There's a prologue where you come to find out how Andre went to live with his father after a tragic tragic train accident. Then the bit about his coming of age followed by Andre being conscripted to fight for Hungary. Ending with Andre making his journey home with a very unlikely companion. In the coming of age part, his father ends up bringing in and taking care of another boy named Zlee. I believe that's how you pronounce it, Z-L-E-E. Zlee and Andre become very close friends and they are both amazing marksmen. Luckily for them, when they are conscripted to go to war, they end up together as a tag team, sharp shooter duo that no one has seen the comparison for. Now I'm not a fan of war stories or war movies. I just don't like them for whatever reason but this one really peaked my interest because it is told from the losing side of World War One. I don't want to get into too many spoilers but that was the most interesting part of the book for me, reading about an army that was losing. No matter how good Andre and Zlee were, they were still doomed to lose. In the final section of the book while Andre is on his way home, he comes across a horrifying scene where a pregnant woman is being raped by two officers. My only criticism for the book involves this scene because once the officers are dealt with, Andre and the woman that he comes to call Tajna, that is not her name, she lies to him or actually she won't tell him her real name, afterward there is a few lines about how pretty she is and how he's starting to have feelings for her, he's just met her and he says this one off line about how she never smiles. I found that extremely odd considering that the woman had just been sexually assaulted, but otherwise, other than that one criticism, whether you consider it minor or major, I absolutely love this book to the point that I'm going to put it somewhere in my top 20. I read this 190 page book in probably less than three sittings, I would say I think it was about two sittings and I just don't do that, especially not these days when my time is so limited. And I was absolutely thrilled to find out that the story of this family continues on in the signal flame and the third book like the appearance of horses. But even if these two books were not the continuation of this family story, I would still be interested in anything on, sorry, Andrew Kravak writes. I keep wanting to call him Andrei Vinik because that's the main character's name and it's told in first person. I even made this mistake several times at the beginning of the video and I had to cut out a lot of stuff because I kept calling one the other, I would call the author the character's name and then I would call the character the author's name. I would also like to add that if you're like me and you don't like war stories, definitely give this one a try because it's more about the characters than it is the situation. Also, there is a lot of brutality, gore and graphic descriptions in this book, but I did appreciate how Kravak didn't go into gratuitous detail about the rape, but needless to say the trigger warnings for sexual assault. Needless to say I love this book, I don't know where it'll end up in my top 20, hell it might even end up in my top 10. The writing is amazing and the prose is so engaging. I never wanted to put the book down and the only reason I did is because I had to take a break and get up and walk around to appease my sore back. I will definitely be reading everything this author ever puts out, I just love the way he writes, it blows past, which is odd because it's a very dense book with very little dialogue in it, but it felt like a page-turner, like a thriller. Props to the author for accomplishing something like that in a literary format, honestly man, great job. But that's all the time I have for you today. Have you read The Sojourn by Andrew Kravak? I got it right! I got it right! But if you read it, if you have, let me know what you thought about it down there in the comments section. But until next time, I don't know what you've been told. Most of this book takes place in the cold. Sound off, one, two, sound off, three, four, sound off, one, two, hey, huh, hey, huh. I'll hail the chair.