Longlisted for the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize
Nominated for the 2023 Shirley Jackson Award
тАЬAn extraordinary novel about the quiet and not so quiet horrors of war.тАЭ тАФRoxane Gay
Stephen King meets Tim OтАЩBrien in John MilasтАЩs The Militia House, a spine-tingling and boldly original gothic horror novel.
ItтАЩs 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 straightforwardтАФloading and unloading cargo into and out of helicoptersтАФand their days are a mix of boredom and dread. The Brits theyтАЩre 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 donтАЩt need much convincing to make a clandestine trip outside the wire to explore it.
ItтАЩs 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 marinesтАЩ growing unease, convinced that itтАЩs 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 thatтАЩs no more easily shaken than the militia house itself.