World War II fiction

  • Crime: Philip Kerr – Back to Berlin.

    Way back in 1989, British author Philip Kerr published March Violets, a hardboiled mystery in which tough, tarnished private investigator Bernhard Gunther plunged into the depthless iniquities of Nazi Berlin in search of some small sliver of justice. This was followed up by two other moody period novels featuring Gunther – The Pale Criminal and… Continue reading

  • Books that Seem Made for Each Other

    Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safer Foer and A History of Love  by Nicole Krauss were published in 2005 within a few months of each other. After listening to each novel recently on my commute to work, I was struck by the similarities.  Both novels incorporate aspects  of “magical realism,” depict a quest by… Continue reading

  • The Street of a Thousand Blossoms, by Gail Tsukiyama

    I haven’t really thought about the lives of ordinary Japanese people during World War II  until I started to read The Street of a Thousand Blossoms by Gail Tsukiyama. The concepts that were deeply rooted in my mind were how the war and Japan’s soldiers brought disaster, tragedy, and despair to the Chinese people and… Continue reading

  • The War in Fiction, part 3: The Pacific

    A war is not one story, but many. Here are some novels that view the war through many eyes, reflecting the diverse experiences of civilians and soldiers around the world whose lives were drawn into the Second World War. The Cloud Atlas by Liam Callanan When Louis Belk is deployed to Alaska to head off and diffuse… Continue reading

  • The War in Fiction, part 2: The Home Front

    A War is not one story, but many. Here is the second of three lists of fiction that views the war through many eyes, reflecting the diverse experiences of civilians and soldiers around the world whose lives were drawn into the Second World War. A Place on Earth, by Wendell Berry. As the war draws… Continue reading

  • The War in fiction, part 1: Europe

    A War is not one story, but many. Here is the first of three lists of fiction that views the war through many eyes, reflecting the diverse experiences of civilians and soldiers around the world whose lives were drawn into the Second World War. Articles of War by Nick Arvin. Sent to Normandy in 1944,… Continue reading