War Fiction

If you're looking for something a little lighter, The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy is a great page-turner (does the cold war count?). The film's better though, firstly because it plays down Clancy's hilariously simplistic portrayal of the Soviets, and secondly because it features Sean Connery's attempt at a Russian accent.

Also, I'm surprised no-one has mentioned The Iliad. I'm sure we'll still be reading both in two thousand years time.

It's odd - you say War Poetry / Fiction and people almost always assume you're talking about something written during or about WWI (i.e. Wilfrid Owen etc.). I made the same assumption myself when diving into this thread (see my post above).

Glad to see that this is opening up the discussion to include everything which touches war written from 2,500 years ago to today. Interesting and refreshing.

One point I've noted is that what we often think of now as literature about war, written in ancient times, would have been regarded back then as history or military textbooks such as Thucydides' - History of the Peloponessian War, Xenophon's - Perisan Expedition.

You might want to try these little known books by Gert Ledig. Ledig was a young German who fought in the Second World War. He was injured during the Battle of Leningrad and spent the remainder of the war working in Hamburg. He wrote two books

The Stalin Organ by Gert Ledig and Michael Hofmann (Paperback - 24 Jun 2004)
and
Payback by Gert Ledig, Michael Hofmann, and Shaun Whiteside (Paperback - 15 May 2003)

The first is a fictionalized account of the fighting outside Leningrad. It is brutal and direct. Stalin Organ was the knickname given to the Red Army katyuska rockets that worught such destruction on the German armies.

The second, Payback, is an account of one hour in the life of a German city (think Dresden) during a massive daylight bombing raid.

The books sold very well in the 1950s (in Germany) when they first came out. They have been newly translated and published in paperback in the UK. They are both worth reading.

You may also want to consider

Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman. It is an epic look at the Battle of Stalingrad by a wonderful author. It has been compared with War and Peace. It isn't quite all that - but the comparison is not laughable. Well translated by Robert Chandler.

Oliver North's books are good and he's pretty knowlegeable about war stuff seing as he has a show on Fox news called War Stories.

Iraq War Fiction

I can recommend two Iraq war books. The Painted Man by Kenneth Floyd is a thriller about army intelligence and the CIA in Iraq. They discover a plot by an Iraqi general to lead terrorists to a cash of WMDs. The book has twist and turns that unfold in little towns north of Baghdad and has the feel of a mystery.

Imminent Retribution by Michael Flanagan is sort of a mixture of Iraq war, ecological thriller about the consequences of pumping millions of cubic feet of oil and natural gas out of the ground in a seismic unstable place like Iraq. Throw in some WMDs and a secret underground storage depot and you're off to the races...

Ivan.Chonkin said:

Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman. It is an epic look at the Battle of Stalingrad by a wonderful author. It has been compared with War and Peace. It isn't quite all that - but the comparison is not laughable. Well translated by Robert Chandler.

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I read this - I enjoyed it, but was very disappointed with the ending. Maybe it's just me, but it seemed simply to 'fizzle out'.

Phlebas said:

I would suggest "Goodbye to all that" - Robert Grave's autobiography. It's not fiction but the prose is remarkable. His memory and attention to detail puts you straight into the trenches with him. It aslo introduces you to Siegfried Sassoon who has, in my opinion, written some of the most moving war poetry.

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I'd second all that.

A Screaming Eagle at Bastogne

A good war memoir that reads like fiction is Seven Roads to Hell: A Screaming Eagle at Bastogne by Donald R. Burgett, who was a paratrooper in World War II. A sport skydiver for many years, I am compelled to read the accounts of paratroopers under fire.
Linda Collison

First I would like to throw in my suggestion of the book "Year of the Monkey". It is set during the Vietnam war and although it has been several years since I read the book it always pops into my head when I think about war books.

Secondly, I had been trying to remember the title of a book that I read several years ago and I was hoping someone here would remember it. It covers three generations of men each fighting in the major wars, WWI, WWII and Vietnam. Some odd points stick out about the book, but I do not remember all of the details. If I remember correctly the majority of the book is focused on the Vietnam war. The man fighting in Vietnam, his father had died on a bombing run while he was an infant or very young child he always ripped a stick of gum in half and chewed the first half before/during a mission and the last half after he returned to base. The son had continued this tradition during the Vietnam war and made a point about him being the first one off of the helicopters when they went to fight a battle and the last one back on the helicopter when they left the battlefield. I know it's a long shot, but any suggestions would be appreciated.