Wooden Crosses
Set in the trenches of the First World War, this anti-war novel follows young soldier Gilbert Demachy and his companions as it lays bare the reality of war and human fragility.
Work Information
Mud, shellfire, dark humor, and loss slowly carve out the shape of war.
Roland Dorgelès's best-known novel follows young soldiers at the front and builds its portrait of war through mud, hunger, shellfire, and the deaths of comrades. Rather than turning the battlefield into heroism, it presents war as a reality of exhaustion and loss. Its force comes from observation and accumulation rather than overt emotional display.
Review Summaries
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Its realism, which captures the smallest details of trench life, and its attention to the soldiers' exhaustion and solidarity are widely valued. The novel stands out as a forceful anti-war testimony, though some readers are unsettled by its repeated patterns.
Book Information
- Publisher
- Aegypan
- Published
- 2005-10-30
- Pages
- 224 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 15.24 x 1.3 x 22.86 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9781598186727
- ISBN-10
- 1598186728
- Price
- 3662 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Literature & Fiction/Genre Fiction/Historical
With a great pile of packets in front of him like a peddler's pack, the harassed quartermaster was calling out the post in the middle of a regular mob of soldiers, who were all plying their elbows and trampling on one another's feet. It was just at our door, between the communal washhouse -- so tiny that there would hardly have been room for three washerwomen under its sloping shelter roof -- and the notary's house, which wore a red scarf of virginia creeper crosswise on its front. We had clambered up on the stone seat and were listening attentively. "Maurice Duclou, first section." "Killed at Courcy," cried somebody. "Are you sure?" "Yes, his mates saw him fall in front of the church. . . . He'd caught a bullet. Now, . . well, I wasn't there myself." On the corner of the envelope the quartermaster wrote in pencil, "Killed." "Edouard Marquette." "He must be killed too," said a voice.
Roland Dorgelès (1885 - 1973) was a French novelist and a member of the Académie Goncourt. Born in Amiens, Somme, under the name Roland Lecavelé (he adopted the pen name Dorgelès to commemorate visits to the spa town of Argelès), he spent his childhood in Paris. A prolific author, he is most renowned for the Prix Femina-winning Wooden crosses ("Les croix de bois"), a moving study of World War I, in which he served. It was published in 1919 (in English by William Heinemann in 1920). Dorgelès served as a juror with Florence Meyer Blumenthal in awarding the Prix Blumenthal, a grant given between 1919 and 1954 to painters, sculptors, decorators, engravers, writers and musicians.
Reviews
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My husband raves about this book. One of the best he has ever read he claims and he has read them all - or close to it.
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Until now my favorite film on the subject of WW1 has been All Quiet on the Western Front which is, of course, from the German perspective. The film of this experience from the French side is, therefore, a direct comparison but the suffering and horror they both portray is identical. Anyone wishing to experience the fears, hopes and comradeship of those dreadful times should also always read the books.
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It is an anti war interesting book.
Related Literary Awards
- Prix Femina Edition 16 (1919) ・Winner