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Awar novel ormilitary fiction is a novel about war. It is a novel in which the primary action takes place on a battlefield, or in a civilian setting (orhome front), where the characters are preoccupied with the preparations for, suffering the effects of, or recovering from war. Many war novels arehistorical novels.
The war novel's origins are in theepic poetry of theclassical andmedieval periods, especiallyHomer'sThe Iliad,Virgil'sThe Aeneid,sagas like theOld EnglishBeowulf, andArthurian literature. All of these epics were concerned with preserving the history ormythology of conflicts between different societies, while providing an accessible narrative that could reinforce thecollective memory of a people. Other important influences on the war novel included thetragedies of dramatists such asEuripides,Seneca the Younger,Christopher Marlowe, andShakespeare. Euripides'The Trojan Women is a powerfully disturbing play on the theme of war's horrors, apparently critical of Athenian imperialism.[1]
Shakespeare'sHenry V, which focuses on events immediately before and after theBattle of Agincourt (1415) during theHundred Years' War, provides a model for how the history,tactics, and ethics of war could be combined in an essentially fictional framework.Romances andsatires inEarly Modern Europe, likeEdmund Spenser's epic poemThe Faerie Queene andMiguel de Cervantes's novelDon Quixote, to name but two, also contain elements that influenced the later development of war novels. In terms ofimagery andsymbolism, many modern war novels (especially those espousing ananti-war viewpoint) are influenced byDante's depiction ofHell in theInferno,John Milton's account of the war inHeaven inParadise Lost, and theApocalypse as depicted in the biblicalBook of Revelation. A notable non-western example of war novel isLuo Guanzhong'sRomance of the Three Kingdoms.
As the realistic form of the novel rose to prominence in the seventeenth century, the war novel began to develop its modern form, although most novels featuring war werepicaresque satires rather than truly realistic portraits of war. An example of one such work isHans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen'sSimplicius Simplicissimus, a semi-autobiographical account of theThirty Years' War.
The war novel came of age during the nineteenth century, with works likeStendhal'sThe Charterhouse of Parma (1839), which features theBattle of Waterloo,Leo Tolstoy'sWar and Peace (1869), about theNapoleonic Wars in Russia, andStephen Crane'sThe Red Badge of Courage (1895), which deals with theAmerican Civil War. All of these works feature realistic depictions of major battles, scenes of wartime horror and atrocities, and significant insights into the nature of heroism and cowardice, as well as the exploration of moral questions.
World War I produced an unprecedented number of war novels, by writers from countries on all sides of the conflict. One of the first and most influential of these was the 1916 novelLe Feu (orUnder Fire) by the French novelist and soldierHenri Barbusse. Barbusse's novel, with its open criticism of nationalist dogma and military incompetence, initiated the anti-war movement in literature that flourished after the war.
Of equal significance is the autobiographical work ofErnst Jünger,In Stahlgewittern (1920) (Storm of Steel). Distinctly different from novels like Barbusse's and laterErich Maria Remarque'sIm Westen nichts Neues (All Quiet on the Western Front), Jünger instead writes of the war as a valiant hero who embraced combat and brotherhood in spite of the horror. The work not only provides for an under-represented perspective of the War, but it also gives insight into the German sentiment that they were never actually defeated in the First World War.
The post-1918 period produced a vast range of war novels, including such "home front" novels asRebecca West'sThe Return of the Soldier (1918), about ashell shocked soldier's difficult re-integration into British society;Romain Rolland'sClérambault (1920), about a grieving father's enraged protest against Frenchmilitarism; andJohn Dos Passos'sThree Soldiers (1921), one of a relatively small number ofAmerican novels about the First World War. Also in the post–World War I period, the subject of war is dealt with in an increasing number ofmodernist novels, many of which were not "war novels" in the conventional sense, but which featured characters whosepsychological trauma andalienation from society stemmed directly from wartime experiences. One example of this type of novel isVirginia Woolf'sMrs. Dalloway (1925)', in which a keysubplot concerns the tortuous descent of a young veteran, Septimus Warren Smith, toward insanity and suicide. In 1924,Laurence Stallings published his autobiographical war novel,Plumes.
The 1920s saw the so-called "war book boom," during which many men who had fought during the war were finally ready to write openly and critically about their war experiences. In 1929,Erich Maria Remarque'sIm Westen nichts Neues (All Quiet on the Western Front) was a massive, worldwidebestseller, not least for its brutally realistic account of the horrors oftrench warfare from the perspective of a Germaninfantryman. Less well known but equally shocking in its account of the horrors of trench warfare is the earlierStratis Myrivilis' Greek novelLife in the Tomb, which was first published in serialised form in the weekly newspaperKambana (April 1923 – January 1924), and then in revised and much expanded form in 1930. Also significant wereArnold Zweig'sDer Streit um den Sergeanten Grischa (1927) (The Case of Sergeant Grischa),Ernest Hemingway'sA Farewell to Arms (1929),Richard Aldington'sDeath of a Hero (1929),Charles Yale Harrison'sGenerals Die in Bed (1930),William March'sCompany K (1933), andHumphrey Cobb'sPaths of Glory (1935).
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Novels about World War I appeared less in the 1930s, though during this decade historical novels about earlier wars became popular.Margaret Mitchell'sGone with the Wind (1936), which recalls theAmerican Civil War, is an example of works of this trend.William Faulkner'sThe Unvanquished (1938) is his only novel that focuses on the Civil War years, but he deals with the subject of the long, aftermath of it in works likeThe Sound and the Fury (1929) andAbsalom, Absalom! (1936).
The 1990s and early 21st century saw another resurgence of novels about the First World War, withPat Barker'sRegeneration Trilogy:Regeneration (1991),The Eye in the Door (1993), andThe Ghost Road (1995), andBirdsong (1993) by English writerSebastian Faulks, and more recentlyThree to a Loaf (2008) by CanadianMichael Goodspeed.
World War II gave rise to a new boom in contemporary war novels. Unlike World War I novels, a European-dominated genre, World War II novels were produced in the greatest numbers by American writers, who made war in the air, on the sea, and in key theatres such as the Pacific Ocean and Asia integral to the war novel. Among the most successful American war novels wereHerman Wouk'sThe Caine Mutiny,James Jones'sFrom Here to Eternity, and Hemingway'sFor Whom the Bell Tolls, the latter a novel set in theSpanish Civil War.
Jean-Paul Sartre's novelTroubled Sleep (1949) (originally translated asIron in the Soul), the third part in the trilogyLes chemins de la liberté,The Roads to Freedom, "depicts the fall of France in 1940, and the anguished feelings of a group of Frenchmen whose pre-war apathy gives way to a consciousness of the dignity of individual resistance - to the German occupation and to fate in general - and solidarity with people similarly oppressed."[2] The previous volumeLe sursis (1945,The Reprieve, explores the ramifications of the appeasement pact that Great Britain and France signed with Nazi Germany in 1938. Another significant French war novel wasPierre Boulle'sLe Pont de la rivière Kwaï (1952) (The Bridge over the River Kwai). He served as a secret agent under the name Peter John Rule and helped the resistance movement in China, Burma andFrench Indochina. War is a constant and central theme ofClaude Simon (1913 – 2005), the French novelist and the 1985Nobel Laureate in Literature: "It is present in one form or another in almost all of Simon's published works, "Simon often contrasts various individuals' experiences of different historical conflicts in a single novel; World War I and the Second World War inL'Acacia (which also takes into account the impact of war on the widows of soldiers); theFrench Revolutionary Wars and the Second World War inLes Géorgiques."[3] He served in the cavalry in 1940 and even took part in an attack on horseback against tanks.[4] "The finest of all those novels is the one in which his own brief experience of warfare is used to tremendous effect:La Route Des Flandres (The Flanders Road, 1960) [...] There, war becomes a metaphor all too suitable for the human condition in general, as the forms and protocols of the social order dissolve into murderous chaos.'"[5] French philosopher and novelist,
Thebombing of London in 1940-1 is the subject of three British novels published in 1943;Graham Greene'sThe Ministry of Fear,James Hanley'sNo Direction, andHenry Green'sCaught.[6] Greene's laterThe End of the Affair (1951) is set mainly during theflying bomb raids on London of 1944.[7] According to Bernard Bergonzi "[d]uring the war the preferred form of new fiction for new fiction writers [in Britain] was the short story".[8] AlthoughJohn Cowper Powys's historical novelOwen Glendower is set in the fifteenth century historical parallels exist between the beginning of the fifteenth century and the late 1930s and early 1940s: "A sense of contemporataneousness is ever present inOwen Glendower. We are in a world of change like our own".[9] The novel was conceived at a time when the "Spanish Civil War[note 1] was a major topic of public debate" and completed on 24 December 1939, a few months afterWorld War II had begun.[10] In the "Argument" that prefaced the (American) first edition of 1941, Powys comments "the beginning of the fifteenth century [...] saw the beginning of one of the most momentous and startling epochs oftransition that the world has known".[11] This was written in May 1940, and "[t]here can be no doubt" that readers of the novel would have "registered the connection between the actions of the book and the events of their own world".[12]
Fair Stood the Wind for France is a 1944 novel byH. E. Bates, which is concerned with a pilot of aWellington bomber, who badly injures his arm when he brings his plane down in German-occupied France at the height of theSecond World War. Eventually he and his crew make the hazardous journey back to Britain by rowing boat, bicycle and train. Bates was commissioned into theRoyal Air Force (RAF) solely to write short stories, because theAir Ministry realised that the populace was less concerned with facts and figures about the war, than it was with reading about those who were fighting it.
British novelistEvelyn Waugh'sPut Out More Flags (1942) is set during the "Phoney War", following the wartime activities of characters introduced in his earlier satirical novels, and Finnish novelistVäinö Linna'sThe Unknown Soldier (1954) set during theContinuation War betweenFinland and theSoviet Union telling the viewpoint of ordinary Finnish soldiers. Waugh'sSword of Honour trilogy,Men at Arms (1952),Officers and Gentlemen (1955) andUnconditional Surrender (1961) (published asThe End of the Battle in the US), loosely parallel Waugh's experiences in theSecond World War. Waugh received the 1952James Tait Black Memorial Prize forMen at Arms.
Elizabeth Bowen'sThe Heat of the Day (1948) is another war novel. However, even though events occur mainly during World War II, the violence of war is usually absent from the narration: "two years after the Blitz, Londoners, no longer traumatised by nightly raids, were growing acclimatised to ruin."[13] Rather than a period of material destruction, war functions instead as a circumstance that alters normality in people's lives. Stella confesses to Robert: "'we are friends of circumstance⎯war, this isolation, this atmosphere in which everything goes on and nothing's said."[14] There are, however, some isolated passages that deal with the bombings of London:[15]
More experimental and unconventional American works in the post-war period includedJoseph Heller's satiricalCatch-22 andThomas Pynchon'sGravity's Rainbow, an early example ofpostmodernism. Norman Mailer'sThe Naked and the Dead, Irwin Shaw'sThe Young Lions, and James Jones'The Thin Red Line, all explore the personal nature of war within the context of intense combat.
The English Patient is a1992Booker Prize-winningnovel by Canadian novelistMichael Ondaatje. The book follows four dissimilar people brought together at an Italian villa during theItalian Campaign ofWorld War II. The four main characters are: an unrecognisably burned man—the titular patient, presumed to be English; hisCanadian Army nurse, aSikhBritish Armysapper, and aCanadianthief. The story occurs during theNorth African Campaign and is about the incremental revelations of the patient's actions prior to his injuries and the emotional effects of these revelations on the other characters.
The decades following World War II period also saw the rise of other types of war novel. One is theHolocaust novel, of which CanadianA.M. Klein'sThe Second Scroll, ItalianPrimo Levi'sIf This Is a Man andIf Not Now, When?, and AmericanWilliam Styron'sSophie's Choice are key examples. Another is the novel of internment or persecution (other than in the Holocaust), in which characters find themselves imprisoned or deprived of their civil rights as a direct result of war. An example isJoy Kogawa'sObasan, which is about Canada's deportation and internment of its citizens of Japanese descent during World War II. Similarly, the life story of a Ukrainian boy who is at first interned in a labour camp and then drafted to fight for Russia is depicted inUKRAINE - In the Time of War, by Sonia Campbell-Gillies.[16]Black Rain (1965) byMasuji Ibuse is a novel based on the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.The Sea and Poison (1957) byShusaku Endo is about Japanese medical experimentation on an American POW.
Almost immediately following World War II was theKorean War (1950–1953). The American novelist'sRichard Hooker'sMASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors is a black comedy set in Korea during the war; it was made into a movie and a successful television series. In his "A World Turned Colder: A Very Brief Assessment of Korean War Literature", Pinaki Roy attempted in 2013 to provide a critical overview of the different publications, principally novels, published on the war.[17]
After World War II, the war that has attracted the greatest number of novelists is theVietnam War.Graham Greene'sThe Quiet American was the first novel to explore the origins of the Vietnam war in the French colonial atmosphere of the 1950s.Tim O'Brien'sThe Things They Carried is a cycle of Vietnamvignettes that reads like a novel.The Sorrow of War byBao Ninh is a poignant account of the war from the Vietnamese perspective.[note 2]In the wake ofpostmodernism and the absence of wars equalling the magnitude of the two world wars, the majority of war novelists have concentrated on howmemory and the ambiguities of time affect the meaning and experience of war. In herRegeneration Trilogy, British novelistPat Barker reimagines World War I from a contemporary perspective.Ian McEwan's novelsBlack Dogs andAtonement take a similarly retrospective approach to World War II, including such events as the British retreat fromDunkirk in 1940 and theNazi invasion of France. The work ofW. G. Sebald, most notablyAusterlitz, is a postmodern inquiry into Germany's struggle to come to terms with its troubled past.
Some contemporary novels emphasize action and intrigue above thematic depth.Tom Clancy'sThe Hunt for Red October is a technically detailed account of submarine espionage during theCold War, and many ofJohn le Carré's spy novels are basically war novels for an age in which bureaucracy often replaces open combat. Another adaptation is the apocalyptic Christian novel, which focuses on the final showdown between universal forces of good and evil.Tim LaHaye is the author most readily associated with this genre. Manyfantasy novels, too, use the traditional war novel as a departure point for depictions of fictional wars in imaginary realms.
Iran–Iraq War was also an interesting case for novelists. Events and memoirs ofIran–Iraq War has led to unique war novels.Noureddin, Son of Iran andOne Woman's War: Da (Mother) are among the many novels which reminds the horrible situation of war. Many of these novels are based on the interviews performed with participants and their memoirs.
The post9/11 literary world has produced few war novels that address current events in thewar on terrorism. One example isChris Cleave'sIncendiary (2005), which made headlines after its publication,[18] for appearing to anticipate the7 July 2005 London bombings.
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