War and its aftermath

This theme brings together the books written by those who came back, and it has as much to do with the aftermath as with combat: how to resume a life, what to tell the others, what to do with what one has seen. Remarque and Barbusse write in the wake of 1918, Grossman and Levi bear witness to the other war and to the camps, Vonnegut invents a shattered form to tell the bombing of Dresden, Heller turns military absurdity into a comic machine. Vercors, published clandestinely in 1942, holds in the silence of an occupied house.

works 13

• NovelUnder FireLe FeuHenri Barbusse · 1916The war seen from below and without anything heroic: the mud, the waiting, the hunger and the assault, from the side of those who endure them.LiteraturePublic domain
• NovelA Farewell to ArmsErnest Hemingway · 1929War is still written in the language of proclamations, with its sacred and glorious words. This novel holds that abstract words are obscene beside the names of villages.Literature
• NovelAll Quiet on the Western FrontIm Westen nichts NeuesErich Maria Remarque · 1929The First World War seen from the trenches by a young German volunteer, who left with his entire class.Literature
• NovelJourney to the End of the NightVoyage au bout de la nuitLouis-Ferdinand Céline · 1932A crossing of an era, from the war to Africa and from Detroit to the suburbs, by a man who believes in nothing, in a spoken language.Literature
• NarrativeThe Silence of the SeaLe Silence de la merVercors · 1942A courteous occupier speaks alone each evening before two hosts who have resolved never to answer him.Literature
• NarrativeIf This Is a ManSe questo è un uomoPrimo Levi · 1947Testimony of a young Italian chemist deported to Auschwitz, written on his return in an analytical tone.Literature
• NovelThe Naked and the DeadNorman Mailer · 1948The novel follows a patrol and shows that hierarchy, fear and class contempt weigh there as heavily as the enemy.Literature
• NovelThe Tin DrumDie BlechtrommelGünter Grass · 1959Danzig and then the Rhineland, from the beginning of the century to the fifties, told by a man who remained the size of a three-year-old child.Literature
• NovelThe Flanders RoadLa Route des FlandresClaude Simon · 1960A cavalryman who survived the rout of 1940 tries to understand the death of his captain.Literature
• NovelLife and FateЖизнь и судьбаVasily Grossman · 1960A novel about Stalingrad at war and the two totalitarianisms, seized by the political police and published abroad after its author's death.Literature
• NovelCatch-22Joseph Heller · 1961The danger in this novel comes less from the enemy than from the hierarchy and an absurd regulation; it ranks among the great books of protest.Literature
• NovelSlaughterhouse-FiveKurt Vonnegut · 1969After the war, when the author asked the American air force for details about the raid, he was told that the information was still classified. He had witnessed it, as a prisoner.Literature
• CinemaThe Tin DrumDie BlechtrommelVolker Schlöndorff · 1979Danzig, from the interwar years to the war, seen through a child who refused to grow up and will not let go of his drum.Cinema