Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
Ben Fountain
“If a bullet’s going to get you, it’s already been fired”
Available as eBook, Downloadable audio
Now a major motion picture directed by Oscar-winning director Ang Lee
His whole nation is celebrating what is the worst day of his life
Nineteen-year-old Billy Lynn is home from Iraq. And he’s a hero. Billy and the rest of Bravo Company were filmed defeating Iraqi insurgents in a ferocious firefight. Now Bravo’s three minutes of extreme bravery is a YouTube sensation and the Bush Administration has sent them on a nationwide Victory Tour.
During the final hours of the tour Billy will mix with the rich and powerful, endure the politics and praise of his fellow Americans - and fall in love. He’ll face hard truths about life and death, family and friendship, honour and duty.
Tomorrow he must go back to war.
“Brilliant … a book for our times”
observer
See more reviews
“Astonishingly brilliant”
Bernard Cornwell
mail On Sunday
“Spectacular … an exhilarating rush”
sunday Times
“Funny, damning, devastating”
independent
“Vivid, resonant, thundering”
financial Times
Ben Fountain
Ben Fountain is the author of the acclaimed short-story collection Brief Encounters with Che Guevaraand a debut novel, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, which won the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, the 2012 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction and the 2012 Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize, and was shortlisted for the 2012 National Book Award. In addition, he has received the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Barnes & Noble Discover Award for Fiction, an O. Henry Award and two Pushcart Prizes. He was also shortlisted for the International Author of the Year Award in 2012.
His fiction has been published in Harper’s, The Paris Review, Zoetrope: All-Story and Stories from the South: The Year’s Best, and his nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times among other publications. He lives in Dallas, Texas.
Ben Fountain reads from Billy Lynn’s Longtime Walk at the 2012 National Book Awards Finalists’ Reading. (It won the the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction.)
Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
“The men of Bravo are not cold. It’s a chilly and windwhipped Thanksgiving Day with sleet and freezing rain forecast for late afternoon, but Bravo is nicely blazed on Jack and Cokes thanks to the epic crawl of game-day traffic and the limo’s minibar…” Read an extract from Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk
Ben Fountain
NPR
Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
An exhilarating ride; funny, oddly touching, written with garish clarity … And in Billy we’ve found a hero for our times.
Mark Wilson
Independent
Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
Mariella Frostrup talks to Ben Fountain about his bestselling novel Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk
Open Book
BBC
The trailer for the Ang Lee adaptation of Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, based on the novel by Ben Fountain
