Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya 
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A powerful and affecting novel imagining the inner turmoil of soldiers on a military base in Afghanistan. Longlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature.Following a desperate night-long battle, a group of beleaguered soldiers in an isolated base in Kandahar are faced with a lone woman demanding the return of her brother’s body. Is she a spy, a black widow, a lunatic or what she claims to be: a grieving sister intent on burying her brother according to local rites? As she persists, single-minded in her mission, the camp’s tense, claustrophobic atmosphere comes to a boil as the men argue about what to do next.The Watch takes an age-old story – the myth of Antigone – and hurls it into present-day Afghanistan. The result is a gripping, deeply affecting book that brilliantly exposes the realities of war. It is also our most powerful expression to date of the nature and futility of this very contemporary conflict.