Redeployment was published in March 2014. In the New York Times, Dexter Filkins wrote: "It's the best thing written so far on what the war did to people’s souls."[10] In The Guardian, Edward Docx wrote:[11]
[I]t is definitely in the combined effect of the stories that Redeployment garners its power and earns the comparisons to Tim O'Brien's writing on Vietnam that it has been getting in America. Indeed, Klay's gifts become more apparent with each new narrator and circumstance: his reach, his tonal control, his observational sophistication, the sheer emotional torque of his narratives. By the end, he had convincingly inhabited more than a dozen different voices and I felt I had learned more about Iraq than in any documentary or factual account.
Writing in the Daily Beast, Brian Castner described the book "a clinic in the profanities of war". He wrote:[12]
If there is a flaw to be found here it is only one of narrowness; all of these narrators are American men and most are Marines. But the voices are strong and varied, and we hear from enlisted men and officers, chaplains and lawyers, State Department do-gooders and college students, and, of course, many grunts. The book contains plenty of blood-dead-hajji-fuck-kill-love, but also stories that violate innocence and faith itself. If obscenity scrapes just the skin then through the narrative arc of tragedy and suffering Klay has managed to dig down to the organs.
On November 19, Redeployment received the 2014 National Book Award for fiction.[13] The judges described it as a "brutal, piercing sometimes darkly funny collection" that "stakes Klay's claim for consideration as the quintessential storyteller of America's Iraq conflict."[2] In his acceptance speech, he said: "I can't think of a more important conversation to be having — war's too strange to be processed alone. I want to thank everyone who picked up the book, who read it and decided to join the conversation."[14] National Public Radio reported that:[15]
Across a dozen stories told in first-person, Redeployment is at its heart a meditation on war — and the responsibility that everyone, especially the average citizen, bears for it.
The New York Times included Redeployment on its list of the "Ten Best Books of 2014".[16] On January 19, 2015 it was announced by the National Book Critics Circle that Redeployment received its 2014 John Leonard Award for "a best first book published in any genre."[17]
In May 2015 The Chautauqua Institute announced that Redeployment won the 2015 Chautauqua Prize. The Chautauqua Prize is awarded annually to commemorate a book of fiction or literary/narrative nonfiction that provides a richly rewarding reading experience and honors the author for a significant contribution to the literary arts.[18]
In June 2015, the American Library Association announced that Klay's Redeployment was the 2015 recipient of the W. Y. Boyd Literary Award for Excellence in Military Fiction.[19] In November 2015, Redeployment was awarded the Warwick Prize for Writing for 2015.[20]
