Literary Fiction War

Dick Heldar is a war correspondent and an artist, well known for the drawings he sends home to the London papers from wars in exotic places like Sudan. When he returns to London, he attempts to make a career for himself as a serious artist and re-encounters his childhood sweetheart, Maisie. He then learns that a minor problem with his eyes is actually the onset of an incurable blindness, the result of a head injury during the war.

La Grande Guerre est finie depuis sept ans quand Maurice Poudevigne, que tout le monde croyait mort, revient "au pays". En suivant pas à pas l'itinéraire de cet ouvrier agricole de son enfance à sa mort, Jean Anglade nous offre un bel hymne à la vie et à la culture paysanne du début du siècle dernier. Fataliste, Maurice Poudevigne ? Il aime les joies simples, vivre entre les siens, monter, chaque été, sur le plateau du Cézallier, faucher les foins comme son père puis son frère aîné l'ont fait avant lui, au point d'être jugé le meilleur du canton.

Germany, 1939. Two children watch as their parents become immersed in the puzzling mechanisms of power. Sieglinde lives in the affluent ignorance of middle-class Berlin, her father a censor who excises prohibited words from books. Erich is an only child living near Leipzig, tending beehives, aware that he is shadowed by strange, unanswered questions. Drawn together as Germany's hope for a glorious future begins to collapse, the children find temporary refuge in an abandoned theater amid the rubble of Berlin. Watching over them is the wish child, the enigmatic narrator of their story.

In the summer of 1853, in Lafayette City, Louisiana, 11-year-old Elias Abrams loses his mother to yellow fever. Grief-stricken and alone, he becomes embroiled in the street life of New Orleans. After Elias is falsely accused of a crime, and in order to escape arrest, he enlists in the Third Louisiana Regiment, where 3,000 other Jews will ultimately fight for the Confederacy. Before long, though, Elias' past catches up with him, and he realizes that he must face his demons, or lose the woman he loves

Chiara is working on a film about an incident in Balangiga, Samar, in 1901, when Filipino revolutionaries attacked an American garrison, and in retaliation, American soldiers created "a howling wilderness" of the surrounding countryside. Magsalin reads Chiara's film script and writes her own version. Insurrecto contains within its dramatic action two rival scripts from the filmmaker and the translator - one about a white photographer, the other about a Filipino schoolteacher.

By Cecile depicts post-World War II France as it reels from war and recovery. In Paris, an orphan girl, Cecile, finds refuge with an older man. He introduces her to nightclubs, intellectuals, artists (Jean Cocteau, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Eartha Kitt!), and non-monogamy. When she falls for his mistress, she begins to live a life she deems worthy of writing about...but only under the pseudonym of her husband.

Die Brüder Karl und Paul Effinger brechen aus Süddeutschland nach Berlin auf, um Schrauben zu produzieren. Dort heiraten sie in die alteingesessene Familie Oppner ein, es gelingt der gesellschaftlicher Aufstieg. Doch spätestens nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg beginnen die bürgerlichen Gewissheiten zu bröckeln. Auch die prachtvollen Feste können nicht mehr über den sich immer brutaler äußernden Antisemitismus in der Gesellschaft hinwegtäuschen. Die Auflehnung der jungen Generation wirbelt die gutbürgerliche Familie zusätzlich durcheinander.

The world seems an effervescent place of parties, jazz, and family happiness to Mary van der Linden. But the Eisenhower years are ending, and 1960 brings the presidential battle between two ambitious senators: John Kennedy and Richard Nixon. When an American newspaper reporter called Frank Renzo enters the van der Lindens' lives, they are forced to confront the terror of the Cold War that is the dark background of their carefree existence.

Richard Sharpe believes that his soldiering days are over, but his retirement is interrupted by a request from Donna Louisa Vivar for Sharpe to discover the truth about the disappearance of her husband, the Captain-General of Chile. Sharpe's quest takes him to St Helena and an encounter with Napoleon, and on to Chile where he soon finds himself caught up in the rebellion against Spanish rule and fighting alongside the flamboyant rebel admiral, Lord Thomas Cochrane.

The border is a tough place to work, especially for FBI agent Tom Eriksen. With a history of violence, he cannot afford any on-duty screw-ups. So when an investigation ends in a bloody shootout and the shooting is deemed "questionable", the bureau reassigns Eriksen to an office known as "the Island of Misfit Cops": A resting place for those who have screwed up enough to warrant being dumped in El Paso. But when his partner is murdered, Eriksen must take charge and solve the case, wading through corruption and betrayal to discover the truth.

The beloved actor and screenwriter's first novel, set during World War I, delicately and elegantly explores a most unusual romance. It's almost the end of the war, and Paul Peachy, a young railway employee and amateur actor, enlists and ships off to France. Peachy instantly realizes how out of his depth he is, and never more so than when he is captured. Risking everything, Peachy, who as a child of immigrants speaks German, makes the reckless decision to impersonate one of the enemy's most famous spies.

"Wiesenstein" ist die Geschichte eines irrend-liebenden Genies und einer untergehenden und sich doch dagegenstemmenden Welt. Ein überwältigender Roman. Der alte Mann, eine Berühmtheit, Nobelpreisträger, verlässt mit seiner Frau das Sanatorium, wo beide Erholung gesucht haben, und wird mit militärischem Begleitschutz zum Zug gebracht. Doch es ist März 1945, das Sanatorium Dr. Weidner liegt im eben zerstörten Dresden und der Zug fährt nach Osten. Gerhart und Margarete Hauptmann nämlich wollen nirgendwo anders hin als nach Schlesien, in ihre Villa "Wiesenstein", ein prächtiges Anwesen im Riesengebirge.

Worms, Anfang der 1920er-Jahre. Peter Bender, ehemals Fliegerleutnant des Deutschen Heeres, macht sich als Gründer einer neuen Religionsgemeinschaft und mit der Proklamation der sogenannten Hohlwelt-Theorie einen Namen: Die Menschheit, so diese Theorie, lebe nicht auf, sondern in einer Kugel, außerhalb derselben existiere nichts. Benders Gemeinde bleibt überschaubar, dennoch wird er wegen der Verbreitung aufwieglerischer und gotteslästerlicher Flugschriften zu einer mehrmonatigen Kerkerhaft verurteilt.

Paris, 1921. Lorsque Valentine se marie avec l'héritier de la prestigieuse maison de fourreurs, la Maison Fontenoy, elle est loin de se douter de la vie qui l'attend. Malgré l’amour que lui porte son mari André et la naissance de ses deux enfants - Camille et Maxence -, Valentine s'enfonce dans un profond ennui et la frustration la gagne peu à peu. Lassée par ce quotidien et ce rôle d'épouse et de mère qui ne la comble pas, elle décide de partir pour assouvir ses aspirations.

Private Cyril Bagger has managed to survive the unspeakable horrors of the Great War through his wits and deception, swindling fellow soldiers at every opportunity. But his survival instincts are put to the ultimate test when he and four other grunts are given a deadly mission: venture into the perilous No Man’s Land to euthanize a wounded comrade. What they find amid the ruined battlefield, however, is not a man in need of mercy but a fallen angel, seemingly struck down by artillery fire.

Bold, professional, and determined, Richard Sharpe embarks on a desperate mission. He must recover the treasure, vital to the success of the war, now hidden behind enemy lines.

Once upon a time in an enormous forest lived a woodcutter and his wife. The woodcutter is very poor and a war rages around them, making it difficult for them to put food on the table. Yet every night, his wife prays for a child. A Jewish father rides on a train holding twin babies. His wife no longer has enough milk to feed both children. In hopes of saving them both, he wraps his daughter in a shawl and throws her into the forest. While foraging for food, the wife finds a baby wrapped in a shawl. Although she knows harboring this baby could lead to her death, she takes the child home.

It is 1943. Two huge German guns in the grim, impregnable fortress on a huge beautiful island off the coast of Turkey are having a devastating impact on Allied shipping and preventing the evacuation of hard-pressed British troops from the nearby island of Kheros. The Germans are poised to overrun and unless the guns can be put out of action within a matter of days, a thousand men will die. All previous attempts to attack the fortress of Navarone have failed.

فمن زنزانته في سجن على جبل الكرمل يعود الفلسطيني "الوحيد" إلى الوراء، حين كان طفلاً أثناء حرب حزيران 1967... يتذكر "وحيد" أن جده وأباه هاجرا قسرًا من قريتهما "عين حوض" التي حوّلها الإسرائيليون إلى قرية للفنانين، وصار اسمها "عين هود"، الجد سليمان بنى في نابلس بيتًا شبيهًا ببيته في عين حوض، وحين يموت الجد، يعود "وحيد" من الخارج حيث يدرس في الجامعة، ويذهب إلى بيت الجد السابق في القرية، ولكن الفنان المقيم في البيت يرفض السماح له بالدخول.. يجلس في مقهى، ويكتشف شاهدة منزل جدّه في المرحاض، يخلعها ويشتبك مع رجال الشرطة ويقتل أحدهم بالخطأ...

La tragedia que fue la Primera Guerra Mundial (solo superada por la hecatombes de la segunda) produjo una cantidad de obras maestras de inclinacion anti-belica, de las cuales una de las mas famosas fue Sin Novedad en el Frente la historia de las batallas a traves de los ojos prosaicos de unos soldados que luchan y matan sin saber por que lo hacen.