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Tim O'Brien
American author

Tim O'Brien

American author
Alternative Title: William Timothy O’Brien

Tim O’Brien, in full William Timothy O’Brien, (born October 1, 1946, Austin, Minnesota, U.S.), American novelist noted for his writings about American soldiers in the Vietnam War.


The Vietnam War is present in many of O’Brien’s novels. One of the two protagonists in Northern Lights (1975) is a wounded war hero. Set in an isolated, snow-covered part of Minnesota during a disastrous cross-country ski trip, the novel is an examination of courage. Going After Cacciato (1978), which won a National Book Award, follows both a soldier who abandons his platoon in Vietnam to try to walk to Paris and a fellow infantryman who escapes the war’s horrors by inventing elaborate fantasies about his journey. In The Things They Carried (1990), a fictional narrator named Tim O’Brien begins his memoir with a description of the items that the members of his platoon took to war, which range from physical objects, such as weapons and love letters, to emotions of terror and homesickness. While a man’s lifelong fear of dying from a nuclear bombing is the subject of The Nuclear Age (1981), In the Lake of the Woods (1994) returns to the subject of the experiences and effects of the Vietnam War. O’Brien’s writing took a new turn with publication of Tomcat in Love (1999), a nuanced comic novel about the search for love, and July, July (2002), whose disillusioned characters gather for a college class reunion.

O’Brien was the recipient of various honours, including the Pritzker Military Library Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing (2013).

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