
A Soldier of the Great War
by Mark Helprin
About this book
From acclaimed novelist Mark Helprin, a lush, literary epic about love, beauty, and the world at war. Alessandro Giuliani, the young son of a prosperous Roman lawyer, enjoys an idyllic life full of privilege: he races horses across the country to the sea, he climbs mountains in the Alps, and, while a student of painting at the ancient university in Bologna, he falls in love. Then the Great War intervenes. Half a century later, in August of 1964, Alessandro, a white-haired professor, tall and proud, meets an illiterate young factory worker on the road. As they walk toward Monte Prato, a village seventy kilometers away, the old man—a soldier and a hero who became a prisoner and then a deserter, wandering in the hell that claimed Europe—tells him how he tragically lost one family and gained another. The boy, envying the richness and drama of Alessandro's experiences, realizes that this magnificent tale is not merely a story: it's a recapitulation of his life, his reckoning with mortality, and above all, a love song for his family.
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Buzz Books 2012
Barbara Kingsolver, Libba Bray, Junot Díaz, Dennis Lehane, Bill Roorbach, David Levithan, James Meek, Mark Helprin, Ned Vizzini, Jasper Fforde, Diana Athill, J.R. Moehringer, Lawrence Norfolk, Peter Heller, Jenny Han, Neil Young, Bee Wilson, John Kenney, Siobhan Vivian, Matthew Dicks, Rhoda Janzen, Eric Devine, Kevin Powers, Sarah J. Maas, Janet Gurtler, Iris Anthony, Scott Hutchins, Shani Boianjiu, Jessica Khoury, M.L. Stedman, Hanna Pylväinen, Lance Weller, Amanda Coplin, Publishers Lunch, Teresa Rhyne