Tim O’Brien was already a successful writer by the time he penned ‘‘How to Tell a True War Story’’ in 1987. In particular, critics had praised his previous novel, Going After Cacciato, for which O’Brien won a National Book Award. This novel opens many of the themes that O’Brien would later explore in The Things They Carried, and particularly in ‘‘How to Tell a True War Story.’’ O’Brien frequently returns to the same themes again and again: truth, imagination, memory, and stories. As many critics have suggested, O’Brien’s work is more about the...
Source: Short Stories for Students, ©2012 Gale Cengage. All Rights Reserved. Full copyright.
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