War Literature

[Anonymous No.21949531]

Favorite war literature guys? Storm of Steel and A Martyr Speaks are personal favorites of mine.

[Anonymous No.21949537]

>>21949531
Captain Underpants 2 Attack of the Talking Toilets

[Anonymous No.21949550]

>>21949537
Finally, a true scholar. I prefer Captain Underpants and the gang rape from the incredibly naughty gay nigger pedophiles from outer space (and the hardcore ass assault of the equally gay weeaboo anime nerds) imo.

[Anonymous No.21949556]

There were wars before WWI and WWII, you know?
War in the 18th century was kino. Okay, actually it was not and the book is just how everyone fucks up majorly like one general (who was 70 or 80 years old) forgetting entirely his men would need to eat and stuff like that.

[Anonymous No.21949558]

The Rape of Nanking, it's written by a chinese woman who's grandparents wehxswdrre in it.

[Anonymous No.21949565]

>>21949556
It's a great for sure but not my personal fav. Les Soirées de Médan is a good one too. It's a collection of short stories about the Franco-Prussian War.

[Anonymous No.21949576]

Slaughterhouse-five. Love that it's a mix of many different genres and ideas but ultimately deals with the real life experince of seeing the bombing of Dresden and the absurdity of war, in such a horrifying light. It's the complete opposite of a typical war novel, for that reason I can't help but love it

[Anonymous No.21949588]

>>21949576
Always been on my bucket list but Vonnegut's reputation as a super boomer author kind of puts me off. Still super into it though. Premise always reminded me of Catch-22.

[Anonymous No.21949631]

>>21949531
Record of the Three Kingdoms is pre good

[Anonymous No.21949672]

>>21949631
Chinese shit I've been meaning to get into as well. I'm working on Ghost Soldiers rn so a Chinese war book will probably be my next war book.

[Anonymous No.21949687]

I am reading Tolstoy's early writings and I'm enjoying them

[Anonymous No.21949726]

>>21949588
>super boomer author kind of puts me off
Never heard of that in my entire life. I'm guessing people say that just because Boomers might read him the most, for me though theirs nothing for a certain brand of Boomer to latch on too. Vonnegut is a comedic satirical writer first criticizing all the things Boomers still adore.

[Anonymous No.21949732]

>>21949726
That'd be super cool if that's the case. I'll read Slaughterhouse after Three Kingdoms then. I have such a crapshoot time with boomer authors so I'm always apprehensive with them. My bias is towards Gen-X and Lost Generation writers generally.

[Anonymous No.21949760]

>>21949550
I have the special edition with holographic cover and CD of japanese toilet humor music
Color edotions fell apart what a fucking waste

[Anonymous No.21949773]

>>21949760
Dude I have the 20th anniversary edition that comes with a branded Harold rainbow dildo and gilded pages. Best book I ever bought.

[Anonymous No.21949793]

>>21949531
I wrote my feelings about a few different WWI memoirs a little while back:

>'The Comedy of Charleroi' by Pierre Drieu La Rochelle
probably the WWI memoir I enjoyed the most. the way the narrator vacillates between cynicism and enthusiasm, is at different turns a deserter and a decorated hero, struck me as very psychologically accurate. doesn't shy away from the grimy, cloacal aspects of war, the constant dysentery, etc. at times the narrator is grating, but he's young (and french). captures the disaffection of the war generation very well, and you can see hints of rochelle's future evolution from pacifism to nonconformist fascism. when asked about his politics by another officer, he says, succinctly, "I am against old men."

>'Storm of Steel' by Ernst Jünger
less captivating than I'd hoped it would be, but somebody more interested in military tactics and movements and that sort of shit might find the sections that I found dull interesting. the moments where the narrator is plunged into alien realities are the standout parts of the book, and what I'd hoped for more of. Jünger is very good at capturing what extreme experience is like, moments untethered from all ordinary frames of reference. you can see why he dabbled in psychedelics later in life.

>'Goodbye to All That' by Robert Graves
I found the early sections dealing with Graves' childhood and school life a lot more interesting than his war experiences, which tended to drag on for me. his memories of victorian imperial glory, his early holidays with distant family in Germany, his innocent romance with another boy, are all tinged with tragic sensibility because of our knowledge of the looming inferno. he writes with blackly comic, hard-edged realism, which prevents his indignation from ever degenerating into a moral lecture, but I kind of disliked the coarse person the war turned Graves into, and was glad finally to finish the book. ironically, despite Graves' liberalism, Junger and Celine strike me as more humanistic. his commentary on front line soldiers' impatience with religion is an interesting corrective to the 'no atheists in foxholes' line.

[Anonymous No.21949834]

>>21949531
The Red Wheel series by Solzhenitsyn. When I read them a decade ago the last of 4 was still untranslated, I don't know if it still hasn't been. I have a feeling it is the most significant of that entire cycle of novels.
A while ago whenever this thread would come up an anon would recommend The Centurions and The Praetorians by Jean Larteguy, I have to say that those were great recommendations. Like any war novel the storytelling and imagery and especially the character figures speak for themselves, because they are drawn from experience, if only to a greater degree by Larteguy than other war writers. Apart fro sad, heartbreaking nonfiction narratives like Zalin's Survivors and Alexievich's Zinky Boys, you won't find a better account of the post-WW2 conflicts, wars forgotten in the public consciousness before they even began.

[Anonymous No.21949835]

Is The Good Soldier Švejk any good?

[Anonymous No.21949836]

>>21949531
Curzio Malaparte is sometimes overlooked around here. I enjoyed The Volga Rises in Europe, and Kaputt. I'll get around to some of his other work, but it's well written at the very least. The content is really up for you to enjoy, but I assume it's as truthful of a perspective (from a journalist) that you can get.

[Anonymous No.21949842]

>>21949773
I memoryholed that

[Anonymous No.21951210]

>>21949793
Charleroi is such an awesome book. I bought it after watching Paths Of Glory and I have no regrets. Best book about the Poilus imo. I'm a bit of a /k/ type guy who is going to be joining the FFL soon so Junger really hit for me. Plus, I read Junger right when Ukraine broke out, so I associate that book with war in general as a concept and state of being. I haven't read Graves, but I'll put her on the list.

[Anonymous No.21951214]

>>21949836
>overlooked
Retard, he is in many charts and is invariably recommended in every thread related to NYRB

[Anonymous No.21951243]

Babel "Konarmiya"
Simonov "The Living and the Dead"

[Anonymous No.21951324]

>>21949531
>Storm of Steel
>Mine Were of Trouble
>My Early Life (bits where Churchill talks about his military service)
>A Memoir of the Warsaw Uprising

[Anonymous No.21951524]

>>21951324
All great. Warsaw Uprising has been on my list for a while. I'm apprehensive about Churchill though, dude was such a cunt in Gallipoli.

[Anonymous No.21952500]

I loved Storm of Steel but I read it years ago and kind of hate Jünger threads.

[Anonymous No.21952726]

>>21952500
I get it. Have you ever read A Martyr Speaks? It's a journal written by delusional American soldier that went over to Rhodesia to fight in the Bush War, and slowly loses his grasp on reality as a result. It's an awesome book.

[Anonymous No.21952926]

>>21952726
:0 sounds cool anon!

[Anonymous No.21952944]

>>21952726
>not on any of my pirate websites
>cheapest copy is over a hundred dollars (for a "readable" copy)
Fuck!

[Anonymous No.21952967]

For Whom The Bell Tolls is a must read

[Anonymous No.21953006]

Generation Kill

[Anonymous No.21953277]

>>21951210
Nice to see another anon who read and liked Charleroi. Good luck in the FFL anon! You should keep us posted

[Anonymous No.21953630]

Got this on my list. I'll read it eventually, I swear guys.

[Anonymous No.21953645]

>>21952967
not WW1, but a good book
>/lit/ contrarians will deny this because too mainstream

[Anonymous No.21953656]

the war parts of War and Peace

[Anonymous No.21954034]

Read Thucydides and Livy

/thread

[Anonymous No.21954550]

>>21952944
Yeah you can't get it anywhere because /pol/ faggots love this book, so it naturally got kicked out of print. Sucks, because it is one of the most unique war books I have ever read.

[Anonymous No.21954558]

>>21953277
I've been posting in /k/ about it. So if you see somebody posting FFL related shit there, you know it's me. I'm planning on going sometime next year after I get my Associates degree.

[Anonymous No.21954891]

I enjoyed this book. A russian journalist gets drafted for the 1st chechen war, writes about it, and voluntarily enlists foe the 2nd. Pretty good, gruesome shit. Makes me glad I wasnt there.

[Anonymous No.21954898]

For comedy, Catch-22.

[Anonymous No.21956253]

>>21954891
I've heard amazing things about this book basically being the post Cold War version of All Quiet on the Western Front, and funny enough I actually learned about it from that Chechen War shitpost. Been on my list for a while and I'm glad somebody else remembered.

[Anonymous No.21956310]

>>21949531
Knights Under the Prophets Banner. It was Zawahiri's autobiography written before he took over Al-Qaeda. It recounts his student years, his involvement in a revolution attempt in Egypt, the Sadat assasination, prison torture and eventually his involvement with Al-Qaeda. Another good one is Southside Provisional by Kieran Conway, a senior figure in the Provisional IRA and it's intelligence department responsible for the bombing campaign in England. Then we have Che's diaries, which are always fun to read if you can get your hands on them. I love guerrilla literature because it's an experience of war that's fundamentally different from the uniformed soldier. For one, the experience of having to hide in the civilian population, staying underground, maintaining fake identities and having no genuinely safe place to gather openly, living in constant fear of a SWAT team kicking down your door or a death squad annihilating your family. It makes you wonder, why would anyone willingly choose that kind of life?

[Anonymous No.21956379]

>>21956310
Holy shit that's awesome. Premise reminds me a lot of Vo Nguyen Giap's Military Art of People's War. Definitely putting that on the list.

[Anonymous No.21956964]

>>21954891
A great book.

[Anonymous No.21957010]

best gulf war literature in pic related

[Anonymous No.21957375]

>>21949576
I hated it

[Anonymous No.21957376]

>>21957010
Based and Fedpilled.

[Anonymous No.21958229]

>>21949835
It is very good and you should definitely give it a read. Can't vouch for the English translation, but the Russian and Ukrainian ones (esp the latter) are excellent and the book itself is still very relevant a century later - it's probably the best possible depiction of a dying empire and its society.
If you accidentally find yourself reading about the RU-UKR war - just know that "Svejk" is a horrifyingly accurate description of what is actually happening on the ground.

[Anonymous No.21958429]

>>21949588
it is a very short book
can be read front to back in a cross-country flight.

[Anonymous No.21958631]

>>21949834
I think they're all out now, there was a effort in 2017 to translate the whole thing.

[Anonymous No.21958663]

>>21952726
What the fuck I want to read this.
>>21952944
Tragedy!

[Anonymous No.21959115]

Can't believe nobody has mentioned Starship Troopers. It's the perfect mix of sci-fi and military.

[Anonymous No.21959638]

>>21959115
That's a basic one that isn't historical. Excellent read though.

[Anonymous No.21960055]

>>21949531
Sevastopol Sketches and Tolstoy's other war-based works are great. Sevastopol in August is probably my favourite.