Heralding the arrival of a major new talent, Noah Cicero's first European publication includes two short stories and a novella, The Human War, about the first hours of the 2003 war in Iraq as experienced by a screwed-up kid in Ohio who feels the world is spinning out of his control. His reaction to the coming war? He drinks, has sex, goes to a strip club, he does anything that Youngstown, Ohio offers as human distraction - but this only makes the horror deepen. Noah Cicero's deadpan humour is reminiscent of Sartre and Beckett, and The Human War is a blackly funny and deeply cruel look at the cold heart of the world.