Pip has been thinking about books and war, after she saw bill-boards for a new television adaptation of Catch 22. She reviews Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019) by Ocean Vuong and Ten Fragments of Primo Levi - An essay by Giacomo Lichtner.
Listeners' suggestions for good war book reads
Andrew: I had never read All Quiet on the Western Front until last year. It is a very moving, raw, honest book. And it shows us how the Germans experienced WWI.
Meaghan: Milo 18 Leon Uris so profound...sharing the meal between starving family with a stranger. It consisted of a radish.
Vaughan: Günter Grass' Danzig Trilogy (The Tin Drum/ Cat And Mouse/ Dog Years) is amazing.
Shaun: Sword of Honour trilogy by Evelyn Waugh. Painfully funny.
Ian: Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5 has a different take on harrowing elements of WW2 in Europe and Art Spiegelman's Maus graphic novel - is probably the only way to retell the horrors of the holocaust.
Christine: All the light we cannot see by Anthony Doerr - I am struggling to get through all the light we cannot see. I have to keep putting it down. It is one the most powerful, harrowing and compelling books I have read for a long time.
Graymann: Sniper One, Sniper (Vietnam M 14), The Circuit, Bob Shepherd' (Of note to New Zealanders is an account with Margaret Mot) The issues mentioned in the 2008 account have not been resolved, if anything have expanded and Eight Lves Down.
The Glass Room by Simon Mawer.
Chris Cleave Everyone Brave is Forgiven. Unusual, remarkable book about a teacher, her pupil, and soldier friend set in London during the blitz. Unbearably sad but compulsively readable
Norm: The most amazing book war-related I have read is A man called Intrepid
