Ww1 fiction

[lancslass17]

Want to buy a friend a book, she is going to ypres and Flanders.

Are there any fiction books based around here?

All Quiet on the Western Front is excellent, told from the perspective of a German soldier.
War Horse
Both of Pat Barker’s WWI trilogies - Regeneration and Life Class
A Long Long Way
It’s non fiction but Vera Brittain’s autobiography Testaments of Youth

Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks

Great recommendations from TattiePants and RenoDakota. I'd add Robert Graves' masterpiece Goodbye to all That. It's non-fiction, but as exciting and moving as any novel.

Birdsong.

Very few books have touched my soul but that one did.

The Razor's Edge, by Somerset Maugham, is an oldie but goodie set immediately after the war. It's 1919 and young airman Larry comes home to the US. But he can't settle and soon returns to Europe.

A Very Long Engagement by Sebastien Japrisot has an intrepid heroine at the battle of the Somme. The movie, with Audrey Tautou, is excellent.

All Quiet on the Western front. Such a powerful book.

All Quiet on the Western front. Such a powerful book.

Came here to say this too

Birdsong and regeneration are fantastic.

My Dear I Wanted to Tell You by Louisa Young. Despite the title and the chick-lit cover of some editions, this is a great book. It begins in Edwardian London, then tells the stories of the men in the trenches in Flanders and their families back home. Also some very affecting details about the early days of plastic surgery. And a beautiful love story.

There are two follow-up volumes but this is by far the best.

Was going to say My Dear, I Wanted To Tell You - it's very good.

Strange Meeting by Susan Hill.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07HY2LVRP/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_b6JuFbHZ138VEA Convalescent Corpse

Covenant with Death by John Harris. It's the story of a fictional Pals battalion from its formation to its destruction on the first day of the Somme battle. It's very powerful.
Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo is very good as well.

Not So Quiet by Helen Zenna Smith - a young woman, from a well to do background becomes an ambulance driver at the Front.

We That Were Young by Irene Rathbone - "Following the progress of Joan Seddon and a group of friends from 1915 through to the empty post-war years, this semi-autobiographical novel portrays their work at YMCA camps in France, in munitions factories and as VADs."

Strange Meeting by Susan Hill - the relationship and friendship of 2 young soldiers at the Front

Out of those I'd recommend Not So Quiet- it's a pretty visceral account that stayed with me.

Siegfried Sassoon, Memoirs of an Infantry Officer.
Vera Brittain, Testament of Youth.
Robert Graves, Goodbye to All That.
A Month in the Country, JL Carr (set after the war - a beautiful book, shame it's not more widely known)