- Paperback: 176 pages
- Publisher: Phoenix (12 Nov 2009)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0753827549
- ISBN-13: 978-0753827543
- Product Dimensions: 12.9 x 1.3 x 19.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 332,339 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Book Description
Insights into the monuments, films, graveyards and poems that the Great War left behind - a moving, intriguing and illuminating de-coding.
Product Description
'Head bowed, rifle on his back, a soldier is silhouetted against the going down of the sun, looking at the grave of a dead comrade, remembering him. A photograph from the war, is also a photograph of the way the war will be remembered. It is a photograph of the future, of the future's view of the past. We will remember them' Relying more on personal impressions than systematic analysis, Geoff Dyer weaves a network of myth and memory that illuminates our own relation to the past.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Dyer is not the person to read if you're looking for strong narrative threads. He is the person to read if you want to find out new things, be taken to places you never, ever dreamed existed and be entertained whilst learning a lot. The book, flits around the central idea of what memorials are, particularly in relevance to World War One, why we need them, how we make them and how we interpret them. It moves between academic research and the vague and sometimes comic wanderings of Dyer and his mates as they trudge through the fields of France looking for memorials and the scenes of battle. Dyer's original mind, quirky personality and enthusiasm for his subject make this book rise above the average history of WWI into something at times approaching art. I had a copy of this book years ago and then lent it to someone who never gave it back. It's a testament to his brilliance that I had no hesitation in going out to buy another copy. It's one to keep, to read and re-read.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Part travel book, part meditation on the nature of war, of all the book about the Great War I have read, this would be my favourite. Insightful and personal, it echoed some of my own thoughts and experiences of travelling in Picardie, tracing my great granfathers footsteps. It's not comparable to survivors accounts, or historical overviews, some passges verge on poetry and are incredibly moving - especially where the author talks about timelines and fading photographs of marching soldiers. Should one love a book about war? I loved this.
17 of 20 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
this is the book to stand out among the crowd: although the subject is not novel - the number of books written about the First World War almost exceeds even Amazon's data-base - the treatment clearly is. anyone interested in how the Great War became one of THE moral touchstones of modernity, in the normalisation of horror or the medialisation of experience should read this book. it's well written, well researched and often moving. it also contains the most honest reason given for writing a book that i have come across in a long time.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Great as always
Book arrived in the condition described although a little late. To give credit where due, I was warned about the late despatch.
Published 16 months ago by P. E. Beard
More sobering fcts from WWI
The book is best read if you already have some previous knowledge of this disaterous campaign.
A personal journey around the battlefields and cemeteries by Geoff Dyer,... Read more
A personal journey around the battlefields and cemeteries by Geoff Dyer,... Read more
Published on 8 Feb 2010 by Mr. I. S. Wolverson
excellent
This is, quite simply, the best book I have read - moving, personal, profound and intelligent. Anyone who goes to the battlefields of WWI needs to have acopy to read atthe... Read more
Published on 19 Jun 2009 by Sommewalker
Impossibly good
Geoff Dyer is the best living writer in the world. His books pelt you with ideas and swarm your memory with unbearably acute images and phrases. Read more
Published on 9 Oct 2001
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