Longlisted for the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize
Nominated for the 2023 Shirley Jackson Award
โAn extraordinary novel about the quiet and not so quiet horrors of war.โ โRoxane Gay
Stephen King meets Tim OโBrien in John Milasโs The Militia House, a spine-tingling and boldly original gothic horror novel.
Itโs 2010, and the recently promoted Corporal Loyette and his unit are finishing up their deployment at a new base in Kajaki, Afghanistan. Their duties here are straightforwardโloading and unloading cargo into and out of helicoptersโand their days are a mix of boredom and dread. The Brits theyโre replacing delight in telling them the history of the old barracks just off base, a Soviet-era militia house they claim is haunted, and Loyette and his men donโt need much convincing to make a clandestine trip outside the wire to explore it.
Itโs a short, middle-of-the-day adventure, but the men experience a mounting agitation after their visit to the militia house. In the days that follow they try to forget about the strange, unsettling sights and sounds from the house, but things are increasingly . . . not right. Loyette becomes determined to ignore his and his marinesโ growing unease, convinced that itโs just the strain of war playing tricks on them. But something about the militia house will not let them go.
Meticulously plotted and viscerally immediate in its telling, The Militia House is a gripping and brilliant exploration of the unceasing horrors of war thatโs no more easily shaken than the militia house itself.