A Soldier of the Great War

“The Soldier of Great War” is compared to the books of Remarque, Hemingway, and Pasternak. It seems that so much has been said about war, by so many and in so many ways—but every destiny mangled by the wheel of history is interesting in its own way.

The hero of Helprin’s novel, Alessandro Giuliani, is a professor of aesthetics. Half a century after the First World War, he walks the road once taken back then—roads that in 1914 were lit by the same bright sun—only everything is completely different, because the war is going on, and soldiers whose bloody legs are trampling those roads could die at any moment.

“I promised myself to reread this book at least once every ten years to test my soul,” writes a reader. There are few books one could say this about.