No man's land : fiction from a world at war: 1914-1918

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Title:

No man's land : fiction from a world at war: 1914-1918

ISBN:

9781605986494

Edition:

First Pegasus Books hardcover edition.

Physical Description:

xix, 551 pages ; 24 cm

Contents:

Introduction / Pete Ayrton -- The vision / Henri Barbusse ; translated by Robin Buss -- Marseille / Mulk Raj Anand -- Rajputs (from War diary 1914-1918) / Ernst Jünger ; translated by Martin Chalmers -- The nightmare (from Kangaroo) / D.H. Lawrence -- Done all that was expected of it and That necessary faculty for trench warfare (from Memoirs of an infantry officer) / Siegfried Sassoon -- Destiny was not willing and I thank you, sister (fromTestament of youth) / Vera Brittain -- Liquid fire and The beauty of men who are whole (from Not so quiet: stepdaughters of war / Helen Zenna Smith -- The apocalypse of Pat McCullough: the sergeant's tale (from An Anzac muster) / William Baylebridge -- Dawn's angel (from Passport to Hell) / Robin Hyde -- Before the war I was an interesting invalid (from The journal of a disappointed man) / W. N. P. Barbellion -- The square, The beach, Conspiracy and ; In the operating room (from The forbidden zone) / Mary Borden -- A real hero, You should have done nothing, and The Austrian officer lit a cigarette (from A soldier on the southern front) / Emilio Lussu ; translated by Gregory Conti -- The battle of the Isonzo (from Journals of War & Prison) / Carlo Emilio Gadda ; translated by Cristina Viti -- At Doberdob (from Doberdob) / Prežihov Voranc ; translated by Ana Jelnikar and Stephen Watts -- The romance of war and Political education under fire (from Blasting and bombardiering) / Wyndham Lewis -- Cannon-fodder and A timeless confusion (from Death of a Hero) / Richard Aldington --

Beethoven and Bach (from Despised and Rejected) / A.T. Fitzroy -- Crevasse (from These 13) / William Faulkner -- Cushy avec mademoiselle (from Her privates we) / Frederic Manning -- Animals, Anchorites of Lust, How Zafiriou died, Alimberis conquers his fear of shells and Gas (from Life in the Tomb) / Stratis Myrivilis ; translated by Peter Bien -- Sheep (from Mahmadou Fofana) / Raymond Escholier ; translated by Malcolm Imrie -- The blackbird (from Posthumous papers of a living author) / Robert Musil ; translated by Peter Wortsman -- To the Romanian front and We'll see what you do there...(from The forest of the hanged) / Liviu Rebreanu ; translated by A. V. Wise -- Švejk goes to the war and From Hatvan towards the Galician frontier (from The Good Soldier Švejk) / Jaroslav Hašek ; translated by Cecil Parrott -- Hut 5B (from The Croatian God Mars) / Miroslav Krleža ; translated by Celia Hawkesworth -- My good Galician forests (from Diary about Čarnojević) / Miloš Crnjanski ; translated by Celia Hawkesworth -- The democratic principle of discussion (from A sentimental Journey) / Viktor Shklovsky ; translated by Richard Sheldon -- I was afraid (from Fear) / Gabriel Chevaliier ; translated by Malcolm Imrie --

Jerphanion writes to his wife (from The prelude to Verdun) / Jules Romains ; translated by Warre B. Wells -- Julia remembers, The salt of the earth, News from Joseph and Joseph's left hand (from To the slaughterhouse) / Jean Giono ; translated by Norman Glass -- In then whousand years this war will be utterly forgotten (from Journey to the end of the night) / Louis-Ferdinand Céline ; translated by Ralph Manheim -- Papa Marescot's family (from On the field of honour / Isaac Babel ; translated by Peter Constantine -- A date with the shell (from Johnny got his gun) / Dalton Trumbo -- Manger, aimer, paye (from One of ours) / Willa Cather -- Who dies if England lives (from We that were young) / Irene Rathbone -- Evening at Violette (from Non-combatants and others) / Rose Macaulay -- Veritable equine items of denstistry (from The grey notebook) / Joseph Pla ; translated by Peter Bush --

One of the bravest men I ever knew (from The secret battle) / A.P. Herbert -- Infidels and curs (from Scenes from an Armenian childhood) / Vahan Totovents ; translated by Mischa Kudian -- Why didn't he get rich? / ÖmerSeyfettin ; translated by Izzy Finkel -- I surrender, Camerade (from The German prisoner) / James Hanley -- Mutiny! (from The Kaiser's coolies) / Theodore Plievier ; translated by Martin Chalmers -- Snow (from The case of Sergeant Grischa) / Arnold Zweig ; translated by Eric Sutton -- Calvary charge (from Military Communique) / Edler Köppen ; translated by Martin Chalmers -- My son is dead! (from The Radetsky march) / Joseph Roth ; translated by Michael Hofmann --The gibbet (from Forsytes, Pendyces and others) / John Galsworthy -- Sweet dreams though the guns are booming, The dead man's room, and He fell in October (from All quiet on the western front / Erich Maria Remarque ; translated by Brian Murdoch.

Subject Term:

World War, 1914-1918 -- Literary collections.

World War, 1914-1918 -- Fiction.

Genre:

War stories.

Added Author:

Ayrton, Pete,

Summary:

From the trenches to the home front, the most profound fiction inspired by World War I--and a moving memorial to the twentieth century's most cataclysmic event.

The Great War gave birth to some of the twentieth century's most celebrated writing; from Brooke to Sassoon, the poetry generated by the war is etched into collective memory. But it is in prose fiction that we find some of the most profound insights into the war's individual and communal tragedies, the horror of life in the trenches and the grand farce of the first industrial war. Featuring forty-seven writers from twenty different nations, representing all the main participants in the conflict, No Man's Land is a true international anthology of First World War.

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Available:*

Library	Call Number	Status
Searching... Hardwood Creek Library (Forest Lake)	808.80358 NO	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Oakdale Library	808.80358 NO	Searching... Unknown
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury)	808.80358 NO	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Stillwater Public Library	808.80358 NO	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Wildwood Library (Mahtomedi)	808.80358 NO	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

The Great War gave birth to some of the twentieth century's most celebrated writing; from D. H. Lawrence to Siegfried Sassoon, the literature generated by the war is etched into collective memory. But it is in fiction that we find some of the most profound insights into the war's individual and communal tragedies, the horror of life in the trenches, and the grand farce of the first industrial war.Featuring forty-seven writers from twenty different nations, representing all the main participants in the conflict, No Man's Land is a truly international anthology of World War I fiction.Work by Siegfried Sassoon, Erich Maria Remarque, Willa Cather, William Faulkner, and Rose Macaulay sits alongside forgotten masterpieces such as Stratis Myrivilis's Life in the Tomb, Raymond Escholier's Mahmadou Fofana, and Mary Borden's The Forbidden Zone. No Man's Land is a brilliant memorial to the twentieth century's most cataclysmic event.

Author Notes

Pete Ayrton was born in London in 1943. After a brief period teaching philosophy, his work as a translator led to an editorial position and later to his founding of Serpent's Tail. No Man's Land, his collection of writings from World War I, was highly acclaimed on both sides of the Atlantic and was named one of the Economist's Books of the Year.

Reviews (3)

Guardian Review

This powerful anthology contains extracts from 47 authors and 20 countries, covering the fighting in all theatres of the first world war. Some passages have been specially translated. It includes memoirs and essays, as well as fiction that is rooted in first-hand experiences. Context is provided by a biographical paragraph on each author. The range of texts is what makes it so remarkable, from Ernst Junger's disturbing War Diary ("In war moral considerations should not be allowed to determine any action"), Wyndham Lewis's memoir Blasting and Bombardiering ("There is nothing so romantic as war"), to Vera Brittain's memories of working as a nurse in a German prisoner ward ("The world was mad and we were all victims") and DH Lawrence's disgust at postwar life: "This England of the peace was like a corpse." One of the most memorable passages is from Emilio Lussu's A Soldier on the Southern Front, in which he takes aim at a young Austrian officer smoking a cigarette, but cannot pull the trigger: "Fighting a war is one thing, killing a man is something else." PD Smith - PD Smith This powerful anthology contains extracts from 47 authors and 20 countries, covering the fighting in all theatres of the first world war. Some passages have been specially translated. It includes memoirs and essays, as well as fiction that is rooted in first-hand experiences. Context is provided by a biographical paragraph on each author. - PD Smith.

Kirkus Review

"Fiction reveals truth thatreality obscures," Emerson wrote, a thought that underpins 46 short piecesassembled by Ayrton (The Alphabet Garden, 1995) to define the"treacherous blundering tragi-comedy" that history labels World WarI.Ayrton has drawn from writingsof major authors recognized for work of that eraWilliam Faulkner, Erich MariaRemarque, Siegfried Sassoonbut readers seeking a new perspective will alsofind fiction set in the Balkans, Gallipoli, and among mountain campaigns whereSerbs, Croats, Greeks, Turks and Romanians fought and bled, froze and died.Most striking are pieces written by former Volunteer Aid Detachment workers,mainly upper- and middle-class women who left lives of privilege to findthemselves among shot-off faces, gassed lungs and amputated limbs in"stinking yellow water and grey-green foaming soap, with bloody bandagesand cotton wool floating in it. Suppurating, nauseating cotton wool." MaryBorden was a wealthy Chicago woman who personally financed a field hospital.Borden also worked as a nurse, and her pieces range from the melancholy to aspare dialogue script of doctors crammed into an operating tenta lunglacerated by three bullet holes is patched, a gangrenous leg is amputated, anda man with a mortal stomach wound begs for water. Some pieces are reportorial.Some are surrealist. Others are grotesque, such as Faulkner's"Crevasse," in which marching troops plunge into a mass grave. Andthen there are the absurdist, such as Haek's "vejk Goes to the War."Every piece gives voice to the "timeless confusion, a chaos of noise,fatigue, anxiety and horror" that is war on the industrial scale.American readers will appreciate the perspectives of writers who focus on theexperiences of colonial troops or the celebrated German Ernst Jnger, or VahanTotovents, who explores the origins of Armenian genocide. It's a book to be read at random,too intense to digest in a single reading, but a worthy addition to any historybuff's library. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Library Journal Review

Starred Review. Ayrton has achieved something very rare and powerful in this book, a brilliantly edited collection of fiction written about World War I from 47 male and female writers representing 20 different countries and speaking with great eloquence about the human condition and the madness of this war. In effect, we get to see firsthand the birth of the modern age that the war ushered in-the terrors and uncertainties; the dreadful technologies of destruction; and the waste, carnage, and cruelty that defined this war and much of what was to come after it (nationalism, the blitzkrieg, the Holocaust). Included are authors both famous (e.g., Erich Maria Remarque, Willa Cather) and not as well known (Stratis Myrivilis, Raymond Escholier), and not one of them fails to acknowledge the pained sense of alienation and helplessness that the war created, as soldiers and civilians attempt to survive this "world catastrophe unparalleled in human history." The volume's great strength is both its cumulative effect and the power of the multiple perspectives it offers. These viewpoints, presented mostly in short excerpts from longer works, deepen and complicate our understanding of the war and provide a heartbreaking portrayal of its devastating human cost. VERDICT Essential reading for anyone interested in history, literature, or the human condition.-Patrick Sullivan, Manchester Community Coll., CT (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Summary

Author Notes

Reviews (3)

Guardian Review

Kirkus Review

Library Journal Review

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