Penguin Books Australia

It is 1919. The Great War has ended, but the Spanish flu epidemic is raging across Australia. Schools are closed, state borders are guarded by armed men, and train travel is severely restricted. There are rumours it is the end of the world.

What would make a soldier betray his country?

In the battle-smoke and chaos of Gallipoli, a young New Zealand soldier helps a Turkish doctor fighting to save a boy's life. Then a shell bursts nearby; the blast that should have killed them both consigns them instead to the same military hospital.

The First World War, everyone said in 1914, would be over by Christmas, and Stephen Conway rushes to enlist. Leaving behind a new wife and a baby on the way, he soon finds himself in the trenches of Gallipoli. Four horrific years later, Stephen is the only survivor of his platoon. Shell-shocked and disillusioned, and during the the heat of battle on the blood-stained fields of France, he mysteriously...

With a new Introduction by
E. L. Doctorow

'A terrifying book, of an extraordinary emotional intensity'
Washington Post

DIVIDED BY CLASS, THEY STOOD SIDE-BY-SIDE IN THE TRENCHES . . .

Alec and Jerry shouldn't have been friends: Alec's life was one of privilege, while Jerry's was one of toil. But this hardly mattered to two young men whose shared love of horses brought them together and whose whole lives lay ahead of them.

When war breaks out in 1914, both Jerry and Alec sign up – yet for quite different reasons...