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About
In 1915, Jean Dartemont heads off to the Great War, an eager conscript. The only thing he fears is missing the action. Soon, however, the vaunted "war to end all wars" seems like a war that will never end: whether mired in the trenches or going over the top, Jean finds himself caught in the midst of an unimaginable, unceasing slaughter. After he is wounded, he returns from the front to discover a world where no one knows or wants to know any of this. Both the public and the authorities go on talking about heroes-and sending more men to their graves. But Jean refuses to keep silent. He will speak the forbidden word. He will tell them about fear. John Berger has called Fear "a book of the utmost urgency and relevance. " A literary masterpiece, it is also an essential and unforgettable reckoning with the terrible war that gave birth to a century of war.
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Reviews
"All the phases of this particularly horrid war, phases that we have become accustomed to from later writing, are recounted here in a remarkable voice…And, in this prizewinning translation by Malcolm Imrie, his writing still has a ferocious power…Chevallier's narrative remains radioactive with pure terror, frightening in a way later accounts don't quite manage. It's hard to believe, given the powe
New York Times Book Review
"Chevallier's book…represents that rarest of war narratives-one that is indispensable, nearly unprecedented, and painfully relevant…What makes Chevallier's book a masterpiece is the lucidity of the author's eyewitness account; its prose moves from practical concerns like picking lice to poetic reverie in the space of a paragraph, capturing the chaos of war and the stillness of the battlefield, rev
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Reads like a cross between the darkest humor and the bleakest reportage…the themes of what [Chevallier] calls 'this antiwar book' are timeless: the folly of nationalism, the foolish pomposity of military leaders, the arbitrariness of death, the madness of war."
Kirkus Reviews