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You may be aware of the recent surge of interest in books and television shows set during World War I, possibly due to the popularity of the PBS series Downton Abbey or to the approaching 100 year anniversary of the Great War. In fact, a recent discussion of the novel Maisie Dobbs in the Brown Bag Mystery Readers book group (which is set in England and France during this period) led to an extensive conversation about the impact and repercussions of the war on the soldiers and their families. In addition, several of the group members recommended other titles of books set during World War I, both fiction and non-fiction, that they had enjoyed. I share their suggestions here with you and have added some other relevant titles in our collection.
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque (FIC)
Originally published in 1929, this classic WWI novel relates the tale of a young German, Paul Baumer, who enlists in the army with his classmates. Their juvenile enthusiasm turns to terror during their first engagement with the enemy and the reality of war confronts them in the most traumatizing way imaginable.
No Graves as Yet by Anne Perry (FIC)
In this suspense novel, the beginning of a series of five novels set during WWI, three siblings discover that their parents have been killed in a suspicious car accident while en route to deliver a document of supreme importance to the English commanders. Their quest to discover the identity of “The Peacemaker”, chief suspect in the death of their parents, is the theme throughout the series.
Defiant Gardens by Kenneth Helphand (635 H48)
Did you know that WWI lasted so long that soldiers planted gardens in their trenches on the Western Front? Tales about trench gardens and gardens planted during other wars, such as barbed wire gardens, ghetto gardens, and internment camp gardens, are told in the fascinating book, Defiant Gardens.
Regeneration; The Eye in the Door; The Ghost Road
by Pat Barker (FIC) The Regeneration trilogy is an award-winning series that is based on the shell-shocked experiences of WWI soldiers at the Craiglockhart War Hospital in Scotland.
Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain (92 B859)
Hailed as the standard by which other memoirists compared their works, Brittain, a British nurse who worked in London, Malta and on the Western Front during WWI, wrote an uncompromising and compassionate work about not only her personal losses but also the devastating loss of a generation of young people suffered by her nation as well.
