Ten Great Unconventional War Novels
(What’s a conventional war novel? One that centers its story around combat and the experiences of the soldiery; that privileges realism over nonrealism; and that proceeds sequentially, without too many tricks of structure. There are novels of this type that I admire—War and Peace, Birdsong, A Soldier of the Great War—but the ten I’ve listed below all violate one or the other of these conventions. I’ve arranged them alphabetically by author.)
The Story of a Brief Marriage by Anuk Arudprgasm
The Tartar Steppe by Dino Buzzati
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernières
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway
I Served the King of England by Bohumil Hrabal
The Lost Books of the Odyssey by Zachary Mason
The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
The Time of the Doves by Mercè Rodoreda
Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death by Kurt Vonnegut
— April 30, 2021