A Broken World: Letters, Diaries and Memories of the Great War - Hardcover

Faulks, Sebastian

3.93

178 ratings by Goodreads

9780091954222: A Broken World: Letters, Diaries and Memories of the Great War

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0091954223 ISBN 13: 9780091954222

Publisher: Random House UK, 2014

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Edited by the bestselling author of Birdsong and Dr Hope Wolf, this is an original and illuminating non-fiction anthology of writing on World War I. A lieutenant writes of digging through bodies that have the consistency of Camembert cheese; a mother sends flower seeds to her son at the Front, hoping that one day someone may see them grow; a nurse tends a man back to health knowing he will be court-martialed and shot as soon as he is fit. In this extraordinarily powerful and diverse selection of diaries, letters, and memories—many of which have never been published before—privates and officers, seamen and airmen, munitions workers and mothers, nurses and pacifists, prisoners-of-war and conscientious objectors appear alongside each other. The war involved people from so many different backgrounds and countries and included here are, among others, British, German, Russian, and Indian voices. Alongside testament from the many ordinary people whose lives were transformed by the events of 1914-18, there are extracts from names that have become synonymous with the war, such as Siegfried Sassoon and T.E. Lawrence. What unites them is a desire to express something of the horror, the loss, the confusion, and the desire to help—or to protest. A Broken World is an original collection of personal and defining moments that offer an unprecedented insight into World War I as it was experienced and as it was remembered.

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About the Author:

SEBASTIAN FAULKS's books include the number one bestseller A Week in December, Human Traces, On Green Dolphin Street, Charlotte Gray and Birdsong, which has sold more than three million copies.

HOPE WOLF is a Research Fellow in English at Girton College, the University of Cambridge. She holds a PhD from King's College London, and her doctoral research focused on archives at the Imperial War Museum.

Review:

"the pleasure of the book is in the straightforward human responses . . . simplicity scores higher than writerly rhetoric" -- Libby Purves * The Times * "As you would expect from [. . .] Sebastian Faulks, the selections have extraordinary literary power . . . they speak with distinctive voices, which echo in the mind." -- Charles Moore * Daily Telegraph * "a marvellous collection" -- Arifa Akbar * Independent * "it is the pain, suffering and confusion that dominates this impressive work, the reality of warfare summed up by Private Frank Cocker, who wrote from the front in 1915 following the loss of his brother, "My heart is so stunned I don't know whether it is broken or not."" * Daily Express * "It is very much the First World War anthology for our time." * Evening Standard *

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