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Fear: A Novel of World War I (New York Review Books Classics)
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About Fear: A Novel Of World War I
Product Description A NYRB Classics Original Winner of the Scott Moncrieff Prize for Translation A young soldier learns the true meaning of fear amidst the carnage of World War I in this literary masterpiece and “one of the most effective indictments of war ever written” (Wall Street Journal) 1915: Jean Dartemont heads off to the Great War, an eager conscript. The only thing he fears is missing the action. Soon, however, the vaunted “war to end all wars” seems like a war that will never end—whether mired in the trenches or going over the top, Jean finds himself caught in the midst of an unimaginable, unceasing slaughter. After he is wounded, he returns from the front to discover a world where no one knows or wants to know any of this. Both the public and the authorities go on talking about heroes—and sending more men to their graves. But Jean refuses to keep silent. He will speak the forbidden word. He will tell them about fear. John Berger has called Fear “a book of the utmost urgency and relevance.” A literary masterpiece, it is also an essential and unforgettable reckoning with the terrible war that gave birth to a century of war. From Booklist *Starred Review* Another gripping WWI novel? Written by a soldier-turned-author who fought in the trenches? How can this be, and why should readers care? Published in 1930, Fear was a sensation in France. The novel is told retrospectively through the voice of Dartemont, a cynical intellectual who enlists simply out of curiosity. From the shifting roles of grenadier, messenger, reconnoiterer, and hospital patient (the result of a light injury that brings him and readers barreling into the visceral horrors of war-torn soldiers), Chevallier’s protagonist is a lightly disguised version of the author himself, tracing his own experiences as a soldier. There is no real plot here. A chronological burst of battle stories and vindictive reflections on the paradox of war, Fear is structurally similar to Ernst Jünger’s Storm of Steel (1920), while readers of Céline (a contemporary of Chevallier’s) will catch whiffs of the sardonic misanthropy that runs through Journey to the End of the Night (1932). Dartemont deconstructs the notions of duty and heroism and draws their origins in fear and ignorance while letting us rifle through his blood-stained sketchbook with images from a war that grows ever more distant in our memories. --Tim McLaughlin Review “Fear hardly feels like an object from the lost-and-found, which is why it has preserved its capacity to gobsmack. Chevallier’s protagonist, Jean Dartemont, a sardonic 19-year-old student from Paris shoved into a uniform and rushed to the trenches, narrates the war with a bracingly modern sensibility. He is confessional, self-deprecatory, and a little bit vulgar. There’s a strong streak of Joseph Heller in his Erich Maria Remarque.” —Franklin Foer, The New Republic “All the phases of this particularly horrid war, phases that we have become accustomed to from later writing, are recounted here in a remarkable voice . . . And, in this prizewinning translation by Malcolm Imrie, his writing still has a ferocious power…Chevallier’s narrative remains radioactive with pure terror, frightening in a way later accounts don’t quite manage. It’s hard to believe, given the powerful, almost American casualness of his voice, that this is its first American appearance. His tone is so inveigling and so amiable as he inducts us like witnesses into that great European madness with which the past century began, decades before most who will read this translation were born. It’s also hard to believe, once we’re deeply engaged with the book, that Chevallier is dealing with events that are nearly a hundred years in the past, deploying prose that’s almost as old. We are lucky his voice came through.” —Thomas Keneally, The New York Times Book Review “Chevallier’s book . . . represents that rarest of war narratives—one that is indispensable, nearly unprecedented, and p
