Bibliograph

Fear, a novel of World War I, Gabriel Chevallier ; translated from the French by Malcolm Imrie ; introduction by John Berger

Type

Label

Fear, a novel of World War I, Gabriel Chevallier ; translated from the French by Malcolm Imrie ; introduction by John Berger

Language

eng

Index

no index present

Literary Form

fiction

Main title

Fear

Nature of contents

dictionaries

Oclc number

869302700

Responsibility statement

Gabriel Chevallier ; translated from the French by Malcolm Imrie ; introduction by John Berger

Series statement

New York Review Books classics

Sub title

a novel of World War I

Summary

An NYRB Classics Original Winner of the 2013 Scott Moncrieff Prize for Translation from the French Fear is a classic of war literature, a book to place on the shelf with Storm of Steel, A Farewell to Arms, and Going After Cacciato. Jean Dartemont, the hero of Gabriel Chevallier's autobiographical novel, enters what was not yet known as World War I in 1915, when it was just beginning to be clear that a war that all the combatants were initially confident would move swiftly to a conclusion was instead frozen murderously in place. After enduring the horrors of the trenches and the deadly leagues of no-man's-land stretching beyond them, Jean is wounded and hospitalized. Away from the front, he confronts the relentless blindness of the authorities and much of the general public to the hideous realities of modern, mechanized combat. Jean decides he must resist. How' By telling the simple truth. Urged to encourage new recruits with tales of derring-do service, Jean does not mince words. What did he do on the battlefield' He responds like a man: "I was afraid." Acclaimed as "the most beautiful book ever written on the tragic events that blood-stained Europe" for five years, prosecuted on first publication as an act of sedition, Fear appears for the first time in the United States in Malcolm Imrie's poetic and prizewinning translation on the hundredth anniversary of the outbreak of World War I, the conflict with which the twentieth century came into its own. Chevallier's masterpiece remains, in the words of John Berger, "a book of the utmost urgency and relevance."

Classification