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Winds of War and War and Remembrance.
Just finished the second of this two part series. Read on an e-reader. I kept wondering: why is this book taking so long to read? Then once finished I saw the page count: 1,396 pages. That's why!
Anyway, this is an incredible pair of novels, which follow one family and others in their orbit, from 1939 to 1945—spanning just about every theatre of war, politics, and heartbreak from that era. Berlin, Washington, Moscow, the Pacific, Europe, concentration camps, and so on.
Recommended!
Nov 30, 2024
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Novel of WWII, written in 1948. Just started it.
Sep 26, 2024
It taught me how literature can carry national grief. The novel doesn’t glorify war - it strips it bare. The language is sober, devastating and shaped how I understand brutality, numbness, and the fight to stay human.
Once, in my hometown, there was an art installation where quotes from the book were engraved into tree trunks and scattered through the city:
“A lance corporal (…) drags his shattered knees behind him; another walks to the dressing station, and over his clasped hands spill his intestines. (…) The horror can be endured as long as you simply duck your head; but it kills you if you start to think about it.”
Apr 16, 2025
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reading these made me bawl my eyes out, they’re letters between two WW1 soldiers.. literature students unite 😞✊
4d ago
Top Recs from @mattshawsome
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this is worthy of celebration: the lack of video—autoplay video, noisy inane video, panicky video, algorithmic, dumb video, rabbit hole video, any video—on pi.fyi is a good thing
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this is going to hurt — A LOT — but it's getting to the point where there's no other option
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