A Broken World
  • Published: 3 November 2014
  • ISBN: 9780091958930
  • Imprint: Hutchinson
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $39.99

A Broken World

Letters, Diaries and Memories of the Great War

Formats & editions
EBook
3 Sep 2015
Paperback
16 Jul 2018
Tr. Paperback
3 Nov 2014
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Edited by the bestselling author of Birdsong and Dr Hope Wolf, this is an original and illuminating non-fiction anthology of writing on the First World War.

Edited by the bestselling author of Birdsong and Dr Hope Wolf, this is an original and illuminating non-fiction anthology of writing on the First World War.

A lieutenant writes of digging through bodies that have the consistency of Camembert cheese; a mother sends flower seeds to her son at the Front, hoping that one day someone may see them grow; a nurse tends a man back to health knowing he will be court-martialled and shot as soon as he is fit.

In this extraordinarily powerful and diverse selection of diaries, letters and memories – many of which have never been published before – privates and officers, seamen and airmen, munitions workers and mothers, nurses and pacifists, prisoners-of-war and conscientious objectors appear alongside each other.

The war involved people from so many different backgrounds and countries and included here are, among others, British, German, Russian and Indian voices. Alongside testament from the many ordinary people whose lives were transformed by the events of 1914-18, there are extracts from names that have become synonymous with the war, such as Siegfried Sassoon and T.E. Lawrence. What unites them is a desire to express something of the horror, the loss, the confusion and the desire to help – or to protest.

A Broken World is an original collection of personal and defining moments that offer an unprecedented insight into the Great War as it was experienced and as it was remembered.
  • Published: 3 November 2014
  • ISBN: 9780091958930
  • Imprint: Hutchinson
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $39.99
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Praise for A Broken World

the pleasure of the book is in the straightforward human responses . . . simplicity scores higher than writerly rhetoric

Libby Purves, The Times

a marvellous collection

Arifa Akbar, Independent

It is very much the First World War anthology for our time.

Evening Standard

it is the pain, suffering and confusion that dominates this impressive work, the reality of warfare summed up by Private Frank Cocker, who wrote from the front in 1915 following the loss of his brother, "My heart is so stunned I don’t know whether it is broken or not."

Daily Express

Reflecting civic life as well as life in the trenches, the accessible style allows you to dip in and out as you please, exploring a world unknown to most.

Big Issue

As you would expect from [. . .] Sebastian Faulks, the selections have extraordinary literary power . . . they speak with distinctive voices, which echo in the mind.

Charles Moore, Daily Telegraph

This is a unique collection of contemporary accounts – and just as compelling as the work of any historian.

The Scotsman

Profound, moving and important

Reader's Digest