American · 1944–2019
Larry Heinemann went to Vietnam as an infantryman and came back to write two of the war's essential novels. "Paco's Story" (1987) won the National Book Award—controversially, over Toni Morrison's "Beloved"—for its unsparing account of a wounded veteran drifting through small-town America, trailed by the ghosts of his dead platoon. Heinemann's prose captures both the brutality of combat and the impossible return to civilian life. He taught writing in Chicago and remained an outspoken critic of American militarism until his death in 2019.