The Missing of the Somme

Geoff Dyer’s classic The Missing of the Somme is part travelogue, part meditation on remembrance—and completely, unabashedly, unlike any other book about the First World War. Through visits to battlefields and memorials, he examines the way that photographs and film, poetry and prose determined—sometimes in advance of the events described—the way we would think about and remember the war. With his characteristic originality and insight, Dyer untangles and reconstructs the network of myth and memory that illuminates our understanding of, and relationship to, the Great War.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

Geoff Dyer is the author of four novels, a critical study of John Berger, and five other books, includingBut Beautiful,which was awarded the Somerset Maugham Prize, andOut of Sheer Rage,which was a National Book Critics Circle finalist. He lives in London.

From the Trade Paperback edition.