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What is your favorite World War Two Novel?
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Chatterbox
- Bibliophile
- Posts: 1667
- Joined: April 2009
- Location: New York
Too many to count, really...
The Wouk novels and Mila 18, although I like very little of either author's other work, oddly enough.
The Guernsey literary/potato peel society novel with too long a title...
Larry Collins wrote a good thriller about the SOE, Fall from Grace.
For the Pacific theater: A Town Like Alice; also John Toland's two books, Gods of War and Occupation.
Some of Nevil Shute's other books, like Pied Piper.
Murray Davies, The Devil's Handshake and (alternative history) The Collaborator.
The Allan Furst novels set in France during the early years of the Occupation.
Non fiction: The Nightmare Years, by Shirer; A Life in Secrets by Sarah Helm; Villa Air-Bel by Rosemary Sullivan; The Past is Myself by Christabel Bielenberg. A definite tilt toward ordinary lives in the war and away from the military history dimension.
The Wouk novels and Mila 18, although I like very little of either author's other work, oddly enough.
The Guernsey literary/potato peel society novel with too long a title...
Larry Collins wrote a good thriller about the SOE, Fall from Grace.
For the Pacific theater: A Town Like Alice; also John Toland's two books, Gods of War and Occupation.
Some of Nevil Shute's other books, like Pied Piper.
Murray Davies, The Devil's Handshake and (alternative history) The Collaborator.
The Allan Furst novels set in France during the early years of the Occupation.
Non fiction: The Nightmare Years, by Shirer; A Life in Secrets by Sarah Helm; Villa Air-Bel by Rosemary Sullivan; The Past is Myself by Christabel Bielenberg. A definite tilt toward ordinary lives in the war and away from the military history dimension.
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Kveto from Prague
- Compulsive Reader
- Posts: 921
- Joined: September 2008
- Location: Prague, Bohemia
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Mark Evans
- Newbie
- Posts: 2
- Joined: August 2012
- Location: Wales
WWII Novel favourites
I think its difficult to have a favourite book in any genre as reading preferences depend so much on one's mood but as good books I would nominate:
The Young Lions by Irwin Shaw
From the city, From the plough Alexander Barron
The Human Kind Alexander Barron
Last Citadel David L Robbins
The Young Lions by Irwin Shaw
From the city, From the plough Alexander Barron
The Human Kind Alexander Barron
Last Citadel David L Robbins
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red805
- Avid Reader
- Posts: 289
- Joined: August 2008
- Preferred HF: I like a series the best - more to look forward to after one book ends. Masters of Rome, The Century Trilogy, & the Outlander series are some of my favorites.
- Location: Southern California
[quote=""parthianbow""]so strictly speaking, it's not a novel. However, The Forgotten Soldier, by Guy Sajer, is one of my top 3 reads of all time.
Written by a half-French (hence the name), half-German man, it tells the story of how he, without speaking a word of German, was conscripted into the German army aged 17 (:eek
, and sent to the Russian front. Needless to say, he survived the war, and his account of the war and is the most compelling I've ever read.
I rate the book so highly that I've bought countless copies and given it to people.[/quote]
Wow Parthianbow - that sounds so similar to a memoir my friend is just about ready to publish on Amazon about her father who was an American boy living in Germany during WWII who fought in the German army on the Russian front. He later made it back to the US & ended up serving in the US Army.
Written by a half-French (hence the name), half-German man, it tells the story of how he, without speaking a word of German, was conscripted into the German army aged 17 (:eek
, and sent to the Russian front. Needless to say, he survived the war, and his account of the war and is the most compelling I've ever read. I rate the book so highly that I've bought countless copies and given it to people.[/quote]
Wow Parthianbow - that sounds so similar to a memoir my friend is just about ready to publish on Amazon about her father who was an American boy living in Germany during WWII who fought in the German army on the Russian front. He later made it back to the US & ended up serving in the US Army.
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MLE (Emily Cotton)
- Bibliomaniac
- Posts: 3565
- Joined: August 2008
- Interest in HF: started in childhood with the classics, which, IMHO are HF even if they were contemporary when written.
- Favourite HF book: Prince of Foxes, by Samuel Shellabarger
- Preferred HF: Currently prefer 1600 and earlier, but I'll read anything that keeps me turning the page.
- Location: California Bay Area
How could I forget Follet's Key to Rebecca? the first one by him I read.
And then, in the memoir category, George Fraser's Quartered Safe Out Here, about his participation in the Burma campaign.
When I was a teenager, I read another memoir from that area, Three Came Home, about an expat family in Borneo's time spent in a Japanese prison camp. It has stuck with me these many years.
I have a hard time thinking of WWII as 'historical fiction' -- my father (b 1916) fought in the Pacific campaign, and my Mom (b. 1915) held the fort at home, doing daycare for other women who worked at Lockheed building planes. Stories of the war were part of my childhood.
And then, in the memoir category, George Fraser's Quartered Safe Out Here, about his participation in the Burma campaign.
When I was a teenager, I read another memoir from that area, Three Came Home, about an expat family in Borneo's time spent in a Japanese prison camp. It has stuck with me these many years.
I have a hard time thinking of WWII as 'historical fiction' -- my father (b 1916) fought in the Pacific campaign, and my Mom (b. 1915) held the fort at home, doing daycare for other women who worked at Lockheed building planes. Stories of the war were part of my childhood.
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red805
- Avid Reader
- Posts: 289
- Joined: August 2008
- Preferred HF: I like a series the best - more to look forward to after one book ends. Masters of Rome, The Century Trilogy, & the Outlander series are some of my favorites.
- Location: Southern California
[quote=""Ash""]Ive read tons of these books; the latest read was one of my top ten faves last year: All the light we cannot see by Anthony Doerr. In fact thinking about it, its probably among the top novels I have read that take place in WWII.[/quote]
Oh boy! I just bought that. Can't wait to read it after all the top however many lists it's made.
Oh boy! I just bought that. Can't wait to read it after all the top however many lists it's made.