Men At Arms

Name: Men At Arms
Brand: Hachette Audio
Availability: InStock
Author: Evelyn Waugh
ISBN: 9781619693920

Author: Evelyn Waugh

Narrator: Christian Rodska

Unabridged: 8 hr 15 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Little, Brown & Company

Published: 12/11/2012

Categories: Fiction, Military Fiction, Classic, Literary Fiction, Satire

Synopsis

"An eminently readable comedy of modern war" (New York Times), Men at Arms is the first novel in Evelyn Waugh's brilliant Sword of Honor trilogy.
Guy Crouchback, determined to get into the war, takes a commission in the Royal Corps of Halberdiers. His spirits high, he sees all the trimmings but none of the action. And his first campaign, an abortive affair on the West African coastline, ends with an escapade that seriously blots his Halberdier copybook.
Men at Arms is the first novel in Waugh's brilliant Sword of Honor trilogy recording the tumultuous wartime adventures of Guy Crouchback ("the finest work of fiction in English to emerge from World War II" --Atlantic Monthly), which also comprises Officers and Gentlemen and Unconditional Surrender.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Baba on January 30, 2023

2021 read: Waugh's modern classic originally published in 1952 tells the story of upper middle class Guy Crouchback having returned from Fascist Italy to London desperate to take part in the war effort. He gets a non commissioned officer with the Royal Corps of the Halberdiers, and this darkly comic......more

Goodreads review by Brendan on July 16, 2019

If you, like me, have been reared on tales of the second World War as the just and virtuous struggle of the "greatest generation", Evelyn Waugh's arch novels (based loosely on his own war experiences) are an important and darkly enjoyable filling out of that two-dimensional view. The stakes here are......more

Quotes

"Highly entertaining."—Atlantic Monthly

"An eminently readable comedy of modern war...frequently hilarious, sometimes touching."—Alice Morris, New York Times

"Reading Men at Arms is like hearing a full keyboard used by a pianist who has hitherto confined himself to a single octave. Waugh is fully alive to the fact that no modern war is just a soldier's war. The drawing rooms, kitchens, and clubs of the home front interest him just as much as the barracks and the tents....To Waugh--and to the reader, after Waugh has waved his magic wand of characterization--mediocrity seems not only a human condition but a fascinating one."—TIME

"A highly entertaining novel about some of the preposterious experiences of the Second World War....Men at Arms has none of the ponderous detail, none of the piled-on brutality, which have made so many war books a heavy burden. Waugh's sharp wit and sure touch of satire are always at work."—Edward Weeks, Atlantic Monthly