Penguin Modern Classics: Wars - Millenial Anthologies

Wars dominated life in Europe in the first half of the twentieth century and have haunted the second, as the terrible legacy of guilt and grief is worked through. In this powerful and original anthology, Angus Calder brings together selected writings which emphasise that, despite the camaraderie and heroism of war, it is really about killing and being killed. It concentrates on why men fight wars and how 'humanity' somehow survives them. Primo Levi, Robert Graves, Wilfred Owen, W. B. Yeats, Anna Akhmatova, Seamus Heaney, Kurt Vonnegut, Marguerite Duras, Jacques Brel, Bertolt Brecht, Sorley Maclean and Miklos Radnoti are among the many writers represented; all offer a vivid sense of what war at the sharp end is really like.