A Broken World: Letters, Diaries and Memories of the Great 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. 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. Diaries, letters and memories, testaments from ordinary people whose lives were transformed, are set alongside extracts from names that have become synonymous with the war, such as Siegfried Sassoon and T.E. Lawrence. 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.

About the Author :
Sebastian Faulks has written nineteen books, of which A Week in December and The Fatal Englishman were number one in the Sunday Times bestseller lists. He is best known for Birdsong, part of his French trilogy, and Human Traces, the first in an ongoing Austrian trilogy. Before becoming a full-time writer, he worked as a journalist on national papers. He has also written screenplays and has appeared in small roles on stage. He lives in London. Hope Wolf is a Research Fellow in English at Girton College, the University of Cambridge. Her main interests are in modern and contemporary literature, life writing and culture. She holds a PhD from King’s College London, and her doctoral research focused on archives at the Imperial War Museum.

Review :
"the pleasure of the book is in the straightforward human responses ... simplicity scores higher than writerly rhetoric" -- Libby Purves The Times "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 "a marvellous collection" -- Arifa Akbar Independent "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 "It is very much the First World War anthology for our time." Evening Standard