Context

We asked our bookstore and academic advisors to name the best war novels since 1945. The following list was compiled from their responses.

After the Bombs, Arturo Arias
Trilogy (Regeneration, The Eye in the Door, The Ghost Road), Pat Barker
The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty, Sebastian Barry
How It Is, Samuel Beckett
Worstward Ho, Samuel Beckett
A Short Rhetoric for Leaving the Family, Peter Dimock
The Bamboo Bed, William Eastlake
Castle Keep, William Eastlake
Famous Last Words, Timothy Findley
The Wars, Timothy Findley
The Tin Drum, Gunter Grass
Back, Henry Green
The Cannibal, John Hawkes
Paco’s Story, Larry Heinemann
Catch-22, Joseph Heller
Dispatches, Michael Herr
Bones, Chenjerai Hove
The Thin Red Line, James Jones
Stringer, Ward Just
The General of the Dead Army, Ismail Kadare
Hourglass, Danilo Kis
Orbit of Darkness, Ian MacMillan
The Armies of the Night, Norman Mailer
The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer
Why Are We in Vietnam?, Norman Mailer
The Levant Trilogy, Olivia Manning
Black Dogs, Ian McEwan
A Canticle for Liebowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.
Going after Cacciato, Tim O’Brien
In the Lake of the Woods, Tim O’Brien
The Things They Carried: A Work of Fiction, Tim O’Brien
Gravity’s Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
V., Thomas Pynchon
Ceremony, Leslie Marmon Silko
Mrs. Reynolds, Gertrude Stein
Wars I Have Seen, Gertrude Stein
Fools of Fortune, William Trevor
The War of the End of the World, Mario Vargas Llosa
Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut
The Very Rich Hours of Count von Stauffenberg, Paul West
Meditations in Green, Steven Wright

CONTEXT is a triquarterly publication intended to create an international and historical context in which to read modern and contemporary literature. Its goal is to encourage the development of a literary community.

CONTEXT is available at bookstores nationwide.