Beauty and Sorrow: a Personal History of the First World War (2nd Ed.)
About This Novel
This book is a masterpiece of non-fiction literature and a history of war. Swedish writer and historian Peter Engel focuses on the obscured little people - through the wartime experiences of 23 ordinary people from different classes, countries, and camps, it reproduces those "World War I" stories that are closer to the historical truth. What does war feel like? In that fanatical era, almost everyone looked forward to war. Many people died in unknown places, and many people shared the bitter consequences. They had hope, anger, sympathy, and sorrow, and finally became numbers in a pile of old papers - who were they? They are not the people who control the war, but ordinary people who know best what war feels like. They were excited or depressed soldiers, explorers with fantasies about war games, intellectual women who devoted themselves to medical work in occupied areas, housewives and children in the rear, and civil servants who coldly observed military and political figures; they fought in the trenches of the Western Front, the Balkans, East Africa, Qingdao and other places; some of them became heroes, some died or were injured, and some fell into madness. "Death is so silent..." Their voices have never entered the public hearing. They only eagerly wrote diaries or letters when death knocked on the door. Peter Englund retrieved their obscured and forgotten voices and restored every day of the First World War. This time, the "real" war experience will come roaring like an avalanche.
What Readers Think
Rating
Community(0)
Rating
Community(0)
