Saturday, August 27, 2011

Memorable Novels about War

Another in my "memorable" series: Memorable Novels about War

All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque
Catch-22, by Joseph Heller
The Charterhouse of Parma, by Stendhal
Dr. Zhivago, by Boris Pasternak
A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway
For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway
From Here to Eternity, by James Jones
Johnny Got His Gun, by Dalton Trumbo
The Naked and the Dead, by Norman Mailer
Parade’s End, by Ford Madox Ford
The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane
Regeneration, by Pat Barker
Three Soldiers, by John Dos Passos
War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy

There have also been many novels about, or including material on, the aftereffects of war. To me, one of the most memorable of these is Virginia Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway," in which the character Septimus Smith is a shell-shocked World War I veteran; his pain and suffering are visceral and powerfully portrayed by Woolf.
 
Site Meter