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The Magic Army
  
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The Magic Army (Hardcover)

by Leslie Thomas (Author)
5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Hardcover: 256 pages
  • Publisher: Methuen Publishing Ltd (Oct 1981)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0413465608
  • ISBN-13: 978-0413465603
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 1,007,163 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #61 in  Books > Fiction > Authors, A-Z > T > Thomas, Leslie

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Product Description

Synopsis

A novel which begins on New Year's Eve, 1943 and ends on D-Day, the 6th of June 1944. The novel tells the story of the American "occupation" of a wide district of South Devon, summarily evacuated of its population to permit the soldiers to participate in realistic wargames.


About the Author

Born in Newport, Monmouthshire, 1931, Leslie Thomas is the son of a sailor who was lost of sea in 1943. His boyhood in an orphanage is evoked in This Time Next Week published in 1964. At sixteen, he became a reporter, before going on to do his national service. He won worldwide acclaim with his bestselling novel The Virgin Soldiers, which has achieved international sales of over two million copies. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Customer Reviews

5 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
5.0 out of 5 stars (5 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A masterpiece, 24 Jan 2006
This review is from: The Magic Army (Paperback)
This book deserves to be better known. Set in a small village on the SW coast of England during WW2, it's based on a true story. Raw American marines really did evacuate villagers from their homes in order to use the area for training with live ammunition for the D Day landings. The story is comic and tragic and romantic. It's well researched, and written with such sympathy that you'll come to care deeply about the characters, and begin to understand the mutual astonishment and the complications that Devon villagers, and British and American forces experienced as their cultures first collided, then converged in the war effort.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars One of his best books, 21 Oct 2006
By Ernst Meyer (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: The Magic Army (Paperback)
This book is brilliant, just brilliant. It is a novel against the background of a true event and provides the reader with a believable glimpse of what life would have been like during WWII. It is not a book about the war, but a story about people getting lost in the mahlstream of war - Americans and British, civilians and soldiers alike. The cuelty of WWII only emerges occasionally, but the war's bitter taste can be felt throughout the book. It is both a funny and sad story.

If you are interested in Leslie Thomas books: skip the "Virgin Soldiers", and join "The magic army" first.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Hilarious and moving account of the lighter side of WWII, 28 Jun 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: The Magic Army (Mass Market Paperback)
Mr. Thomas illustrates the famous British complaint that the American soldiers were "Overpaid, oversexed, and over here," with a novel about the chaos which erupts in a small town when the GIs arrive in late 1943, to train for some major but unidentified event. Written with great warmth, a marvelous, down to earth story about two groups of people who can't quite believe that they are fighting on the same side. Mr. Thomas's rollicking humor makes the bittersweet ending all the more poignant. Excellent reading!
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best WW2 books I know
This is a brilliant read, witty (downright funny in places, especially when US troops are on the move around the lanes of Devon) sad and mostly technically accurate, obviously... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Mr. Peter Lewin

5.0 out of 5 stars The Magic Army
I first read this book in the early nineties, it was written by a local author (Newport Mon) named Leslie Thomas who in his childhood was a Barnardoes boy and I greeted it again... Read more
Published 2 months ago by A. J. Alexander

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