Synopses & Reviews
The first volume of the author's Sword of Honor trilogy, which also includes Officers and Gentlemen and The End of the Battle. It portrays the events of the Second World War as seen through the jaded and melancholy eyes of Guy Crouchback, a middle-aged civilian who joins the Halberdiers, a venerable British army regiment, at the start of the fighting.
Review
"[T]he impression of a rude, amazeless, savage stare that many of Mr. Waugh's early satires engendered, has been tempered to his increasingly sober view; without sacrificing his rich satiric vein, he has accommodated it to a serious personal drama." The New York Times
Review
"[W]hat Waugh effectively did, when it came to the fictional translation of his experience, was to bleach himself out of the picture. The trilogy records what he saw and heard and did, but he himself is not here. He stood aside, the grand manipulator conjuring order out of disorder and finding significance in apparent chaos....[T]he finest work of fiction in English to emerge from World War II." Penelope Lively, The Atlantic Monthly (read the entire Atlantic Monthly review)
Synopsis
The first volume of Evelyn Waugh's masterful trilogy about war, religion, and politics.
Synopsis
An eminently readable comedy of modern war (New York Times), Men at Arms is the first novel in Evelyn Waugh's brilliant Sword of Honor trilogy.
Guy Crouchback, determined to get into the war, takes a commission in the Royal Corps of Halberdiers. His spirits high, he sees all the trimmings but none of the action. And his first campaign, an abortive affair on the West African coastline, ends with an escapade that seriously blots his Halberdier copybook.
Men at Arms is the first novel in Waugh's brilliant Sword of Honor trilogy recording the tumultuous wartime adventures of Guy Crouchback (the finest work of fiction in English to emerge from World War II --Atlantic Monthly), which also comprises Officers and Gentlemen and Unconditional Surrender.
Synopsis
Evelyn Waugh's novels of World War II, known collectively as the Sword of Honor trilogy, are now available in new trade paperback editions as part of Back Bay's ongoing program of reissuing Waugh's major works.
About the Author
Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966), whom Time called "one of the century's great masters of English prose," wrote several widely acclaimed novels as well as volumes of biography, memoir, travel writing, and journalism. Three of his novels, A Handful of Dust, Scoop, and Brideshead Revisited, were selected by the Modern Library as among the 100 best novels of the twentieth century.