A Moment of War - Softcover

Lee, Laurie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1567925162 ISBN 13: 9781567925166

Publisher: David R. Godine, Publisher, 2015

Synopsis

One of The New York Times Book Review's Ten Best Books of the Year

In December 1937, young Laurie Lee crossed the Pyrenees into Spain as a wartime volunteer from England, and in so doing walked straight into a loyalist prison and the bitter conflict of the Spanish Civil War. In this gripping memoir, he returns to the scene of his wartime coming of age and portrays the death of a young man s idealism with sincerity and a total lack of pretense.

This is the third volume in Laurie Lee s trilogy of his youth, which began with Cider With Rosie (which has sold more than six million copies worldwide) and continued with As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning.

For anyone who wants to understand what war is actually like, when it is not being dramatized, hyped, heroized, or propagandized, this is the book. For those who still cherish the beauty and the flexibility of the English language this book . . . [is] a treasure. Los Angeles Times Book Review

This enormously sophisticated work, a testament to the morality and weakness of humanity, has the plainness of Orwell but the metaphorical soaring of a poem . . . An extraordinary book. New York Times Book Review

One of the great classics of young-men-at-war in the English language. Because of Lee s extraordinary spare, concrete poetry, his precision in truthfully rendering what he saw, and his psychological understanding of it, this small gem of a book is one of the greatest gifts to readers I ve seen in years. Barbara Probst Solomon

About this title

About the Author

Laurie Lee was born in 1914 in Stroud, Gloucestershire, and was brought up with his mother and many siblings. At the age of nineteen he walked to London and then traveled on foot through Spain as described in As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning. He married Catherine Polge and had one daughter; he died in 1997.

From AudioFile

NaivetŽ and modern warfare meet in the midst of the Spanish Civil War. Young Lee arrives in Spain prepared for battle though not for the skepticism nor his imprisonment. Thorne's matter-of-fact, almost conversational recital captures young Lee's trusting enthusiasm. Events, both petty and horrendous, are made credible without emotional histrionics. The reader's quiet energy gives Lee's character unspoken wonder and fear. Thorne provides well-rendered characterizations and near-perfect multi-national accents. It's a curious, yet compelling, odyssey. S.B.S. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine

About this edition

• Publisher: David R. Godine, Publisher
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1567925162
• ISBN 13: 9781567925166
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 216