Synopses & Reviews
Italy, near Cassino, in the terrible winter of 1944. An icy rain, continuing unabated for days. Guided by a seventy-year-old Italian man in rope-soled shoes, three American soldiers are sent on a reconnaissance mission up the side of a steep hill that they discover, before very long, to be a mountain. As they climb, the old man's indeterminate loyalties only add to the terror and confusion that engulf them. Peace is a feat of storytelling from one of America's most acclaimed novelists: a powerful look at the corrosiveness of violence, the human cost of war, and the redemptive power of mercy.
Synopsis
This small masterpiece with the same emotional force and moral complexity as Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Tolstoy's Hadji Murad" (Colm T ib n) inspired the forthcoming film, Recon.
Italy, near Cassino, in the terrible winter of 1944. An icy rain, continuing unabated for days. Guided by a seventy-year-old Italian man in rope-soled shoes, three American soldiers are sent on a reconnaissance mission up the side of a steep hill that they discover, before very long, to be a mountain.
As they climb, the old man's indeterminate loyalties only add to the terror and confusion that engulf them. Peace is a feat of storytelling from one of America's most acclaimed novelists: a powerful look at the corrosiveness of violence, the human cost of war, and the redemptive power of mercy.
Synopsis
A taut, poignant tale of war, trust, and salvation, "Peace" is a riveting contribution from one of America's most acclaimed novelists.
About the Author
This is Richard Bausch's eleventh novel. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, Playboy, GQ, Harper's Magazine, and other publications and has been featured in numerous best-of collections, including The O. Henry Awards' Best American Short Stories, and New Stories from the South. He is chancellor of the Fellowship of Southern Writers and lives in Memphis, Tennessee, where he is Moss Chair of Excellence in the Writer's Workshop of the University of Memphis.
Reading Group Guide
1. Why would Richard Bausch choose the word
Peace for the title of a book about war?
2. In what ways does Peace capture the emotional and physical realities of war? What scenes feel especially vivid and real? How does Bausch reveal the emotional toll that war takes on soldiers?
3. How are the soldiers affected by the harsh physical conditions they have to endure? In what ways are these conditions more challenging than the combat itself?
4. Increasingly troubled by Glick's killing of the German prostitute, Asch says, "Glick's a killer. . . . We're soldiers. He's a killer" [p. 115]. Is there a clear line, as Asch implies, between soldiers and killers? What is the difference?
5. Asch argues with Joyner that unless they report Glick's murder of the prostitute, they will be no different than the Nazis. Is Asch right? How does Joyner respond?
6. Joyner and Asch are at each other's throats throughout the novel, with Joyner's anti-Semitism bringing them nearly to blows on several occasions. They seem to hate each other. And yet when Asch is wounded, Joyner does all he can to save him, staunching his wounds and carrying him down the mountain. And when Asch dies, Joyner is beset with rage and grief at how callously Asch's body is treated by the medic. Why would Joyner behave this way after all the animosity between them?
7. Why is Marson so conflicted about whether or not to report Glick? Had Glick and Asch lived, would Marson likely have backed Asch in reporting Glick?
8. After he kills the German officer and Glick kills the prostitute, Marson feels a kind of spiritual nausea. "Marson kept feeling the sickness. It was as if something in him had been leveled, and the simplest memories of himself as he had always been were beside the point" [p. 7]. And near the end of the novel, after he kills the sniper, he "feels a deadness at his heart's core" [p. 154]. What has the war done to Marson spiritually? How has it changed how he sees himself, especially in relation to his former life?
9. Is it clear, at the end of the novel, whether Angelo was a spy? Why does Marson let him go after he's been ordered to shoot him?
10. Does the novel as a whole seem to take a clear moral position on war, or on how humans should behave when at war? Is the novel about more than its specific characters and their actions?
11. Should Peace be read as an antiwar novel, or simply as a very astute exploration of the emotional and psychological consequences of war and killing?
12. On the eve of his departure, Marson's father solemnly tells him to do his duty. Does Marson do his duty? In what ways is he challenged by the soldiers under his command? How does he respond to the challenges he faces? Does he make the right choices at the most decisive moments in the novel?
13. What light does Peace shed on the United States's handling of the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? What does it reveal about the basic nature of all wars?
"Brilliant."
—The New York Times Book Review
The introduction, questions, and suggestions for further reading that follow are designed to enliven your group's discussion of Peace, Richard Bausch's searing and powerful novel about the moral ambiguities and emotional costs of war.
Exclusive Essay
Read an exclusive essay by Richard Bausch