by Marc Dugain (Author), Marc Dugain (Author), Howard Curtis (translator) (Author)
In the officers' ward of a hospital in Paris, three young men and a woman meet in the early days of the First World War. Each of them has suffered horrific injuries to the face: Adrien, the narrator, Penanster, a Breton aristocrat, Weil, a Jewish aviator, and Marguerite, a nurse, one of the few women in the hospital. The friendship that the four form sustains them through the months and years that follow. When the war ends they are released from hospital, to adapt as best they can to life outside. Based on the true war experiences of the author's grandfather, this is a moving, humorous and humane novel about war and survival. 'A powerful, haunting novel' Mail on Sunday
Format: Paperback
Pages: 192
Edition: New e.
Publisher: Phoenix
Published: 01 Nov 2001
ISBN 10: 0753812843
ISBN 13: 9780753812846
Book Overview: Winner of Prix Deux Magots, Prix Notre Temps, Prix Litteraire du Rotary Club International and the Prix des Librairies Shortlisted for the 2001 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize Shortlisted for the Grand Prix of the Academie francaise 'A novel of breathtaking simplicity and power. The beauty and confidence of the prose lies in its restraint, which in turn mirrors the perfect heroic endurance of the novel's protagonists. The Officers' Ward is Marc Dugain's first novel and it has already won five literary prizes in France.They are richly deserved. It is a moving, challenging and ultimately uplifting work, encapsulating in one story the complex tragedies and joys of suffering human beings' The Times 'This is a persuasive lament for beauty's end and a grim reminder of the barbarism at which humans are so sadly adept' Guardian 'A moving but toughly unsentimental portrait of a little community of disfigured French soldiers in the First World War' Independent