Complementing writings on trauma theory that posit the textual manifestation of trauma as absence, argues that moral injury appears in literature in a variety of forms of excess. Pederson closely reads works by Dostoevsky ( ), Camus ( ), and veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (Brian Turner's ; Kevin Powers' ; Phil Klay's ; and Roy Scranton's ), contending that recognizing and understanding the suffering of perpetrators, without condoning their crimes, enriches the experience of reading—and of being human.