Etna / Paul Yoon.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2026 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES , TIME , and LITHUB

A BEST BOOK OF THE SUMMER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES , CHICAGO TRIBUNE , THE BOSTON GLOBE , LITHUB , and SCARY MOMMY

Beloved author and winner of The Story Prize, Paul Yoon, is back with the unforgettable story of a working dog, Etna, who, after a devastating war, embarks on an odyssey in the hopes of returning home.

Set in a fictional country in the present day, this is a story told through the eyes of an ex-military dog, Etna. After surviving years of a devastating war, Etna decides one night to leave the men he has fought alongside for years and return home--to the place where he was taken from when he was young, in the thin but persistent hope that if a home exists for him, it might be there.

Thus begins an exhilarating odyssey told through the eyes of a dog as he traverses across ruined landscapes and fights to survive in a world that, even in peacetime, proves to be just as precarious. Along the way, he encounters other animals and humans who are attempting to figure out how to start again. What makes a life when there is no home to go back to? How do we begin to trust each other again after such profound loss?

This is a novel about the power of an idea, about never giving up, and ultimately a novel about finding hope in the most dire of times.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Yoon's (The Hive and the Honey) story of a military working dog attempting a treacherous journey home in the aftermath of an unnamed war rarely moves in expected ways. Those looking for a penetrating study of animal psychology will be disappointed; Yoon relies on familiar canine iconography more than he offers a parseable survey of animal consciousness. More surprising is that this instinct toward anthropomorphism doesn't reflect junk science or lazy characterization and is instead used to assert Yoon's governing thesis: dogs are people too. Or, more accurately, what are considered essential human qualities can be found in abundance in the animal world, for those willing to look beyond the falsity of human exceptionalism. The novel's narrative construction, an amalgam of The Odyssey and Au hasard Balthazar, positions Etna as a heroic figure who bears witness to humanity's best and worst. Yoon's fabulist shading situates the story at a nexus of grim reality and hopeful fairy tale, enlivening and devastating readers in equal measure as they watch Etna reckon with the all-too-human conclusion that one can't go home again. VERDICT Yoon sidesteps the schmaltz of so many animal stories and delivers something far richer in emotion and conviction.--Luke Gorham

Publishers Weekly Review

A combat-trained dog sets out for home after a war in this magnificent novel from Yoon (The Hive and the Honey). The story takes place in an unnamed mountainous country in an alternate present. It begins when the narrator, a shepherd mix raised happily on a coastal farm, is conscripted by a woman named Soojin, who can converse with dogs by reading their thoughts, and trained to sniff out land mines and disarm enemy soldiers for an American unit aiding their country's war effort. The war ends a quarter of the way through the novel, with the dog's country victorious but destroyed. Now almost five years old and fierce at 67 pounds, the dog wonders if, like the traumatized soldiers he fought alongside, he's been forever changed by the horrors of combat. Hoping to recover his sense of self, he travels the country, losing track of the distance and time and avoiding bloodthirsty survivors who evoke those in Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Eventually, he's aided by a good-hearted man named Hong, who, with his partner, an unnamed doctor, make dangerous supply runs to those attempting to rebuild. Not only does Yoon pull off a fresh take on well-worn Homeric themes and convincingly capture a dog's perspective, but he offers subtle and resonant insights on the nature of faith, which might not always provide salvation but can be enough to keep people (and dogs) going. The author has outdone himself. Agent: Bill Clegg, Clegg Agency. (Aug.)

Booklist Review

Yoon's magnificent sixth title features a canine narrator, a young shepherd mix taken from his seacoast farm and mother and siblings by Soojin, a woman who can communicate with dogs. She recognizes his strength, something he'll need to work with landmines, UXOs, and IEDs during another war in another unnamed country where Americans are again involved. But before all that, he is given the name Etna for the volcano on Sicily (as Soojin explains) and introduced to Fuji, who sleeps in the backseat of the vehicle that takes both pups far away. Hours later, when Soojin delivers the pair to uniformed men, she extracts a promise that they "would have to look out for each other and to never forget that [they] were strong." For a while, Etna and Fuji, with their handlers, Jason and Brian, seem like an invincible pack, but war rarely has true victors. When it officially ends, Etna's only wish is to return home. He walks out of the U.S. base on an epic journey of hope, encountering other survivors, animal and human(e). Yoon crafts yet another literary miracle, gorgeous in spare prose and dense with wrenching empathy on pages that may become saturated with tears. Amid today's exhausted desensitization, Yoon gives readers an antidote of pure emotion.

Kirkus Book Review

Yoon's latest is a contemporaryOdyssey as experienced and told by a bomb-sniffing war dog. After a brutal conflict in an unnamed country, our title character--impelled by an instinct he only dimly understands--leaves his damaged fellow soldiers and wanders through a blasted landscape toward his coastal-village home. Along the way, Etna encounters ruin and danger everywhere: insurgents, drones, unexploded ordnance. He encounters an old blind dog, living alone in a field of carnage that used to be a farmstead, who subsists on tins of meat scavenged from a train wreck and punches open, bloodily, with his teeth; a kindly couple who provide medical care to refugees both human and animal; and a young and vulnerable city dog who becomes Etna's friend, aide, and sidekick. Then there's Soojin, the woman who recruited, or rather conscripted, Etna into the military and gave him his name, and who has, perhaps uniquely among humans, the ability to communicate with dogs and to read or anticipate their thoughts. The prose is often lovely, and Yoon captures well the dog's stoicism and loyalty, its ability to live in the moment and not even entertain the questions that lie beyond the possibility of knowledge. This is a novel in part about navigating desolate, dangerous landscapes, physical and otherwise, until you find a place to rest, a place where hope--to this point wisely set aside, not even considered--might grow. Spare, lyrical, often moving--but it doesn't fully avoid the sentimental traps of having a canine narrator. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.