The Journey

This novel, published in 1952, is set in and near Tokyo and describes a society changed by the American occupation after the Second World War. The central character, Okamoto Taeko, is a young woman. At the start of the novel she has arrived in the seaside resort town of Kamakura to see her uncle Soroku and to visit the grave of his son Akira, who was killed in action in the war. At the cemetery Taeko meets a young man called Tsugawa Ryosuké, one of Akira’s school friends, and they fall in love. Ryosuké becomes increasingly greedy and ambitious and struggles with gambling debts and the dangers of corrupt business deals. This puts an unbearable strain on their relationship. At the end of the novel, Taeko’s journey is uncertain:
“Painful as things might be at the moment, the first consideration was life itself and the process of living. She must not stand still on the road but must keep on walking. This idea had somehow become embedded in her mind and she felt the power of it. She would not let her life become like standing water, which is bound to stagnate; no, she would make it start flowing, like a fresh river. At present her destination might be blank but she would move ahead depending on the very strength that motion gave her.”

The author, Osaragi Jirō (born 4 October 1897 as Nojiri Haruhiko), was born in Yokohama. His first book was published while he was still in school. After studying at the University of Tokyo, he took a teaching position at a girls’ high school in Kamakura, the town where most of this novel is set and where he remained for the rest of his life. Osaragi committed himself to a full-time career as a writer in 1923 and his first historical novel was published in the following year. His 1948 novel Kikyō (Homecoming) was the first to deal with post-war society and won the Japan Art Academy Prize.

What connects the key characters of the novel is the death of Akira, the only son of Okamoto Soroku. He was killed in the war in southern China. His old school friend, Ryosuké, comments to Taeko at his graveside:
“Terrible thing about his dying, isn't it? Well, that's what happens in war. I dare say it couldn't be helped. But, you know, [he] always took the most dangerous things on to his own shoulders. He was like that at school too... A terrible shame his dying like that!”
He often felt “regret that on the particular front where so few people had been killed, his friend had been one of the casualties.”
Later in the novel Akira’s father speaks of his grief:
“He’s dead and there’s no use my complaining about it. Until today I haven't ever mentioned him to anyone. But my loneliness, you know, is something indescribable. Nothing can alleviate it. It gets worse and worse as the days go by. It does no good talking to people about it. Something must be wrong with me.”

Buše and Her Sisters

This novel, published in 1953, is set in a rural community of the Klaipėda district of western Lithuania where the author grew up. The central character is Buše, one of four daughters of Mikšas Karnelis, a peasant farmer. From an early age she shows boorish determination to get her own way and has little respect for her sisters. When she marries Jokūbas Pikčiurna, she sets about transforming his small farm holding into a landed estate. At the end of novel, the author presents the anti-capitalist viewpoint on the legacy of Buše years after her death:
“Today there are no more masters in Benagiai. All trace of them is gone and their memory has faded. Today there are no more Pikčiurnas in Benagiai, even their name is gone, nobody remembers them or wishes to do so.”

The author, Ieva Simonaitytė (born 23 January 1897), grew up in a small village in the German-governed Klaipėda district of Lithuania. She was taught to read and write by her mother. In 1921 she moved to the city of Klaipėda and became involved in the fledgeling Lithuanian cultural movement. Her literary breakthrough came in 1935 with her award-winning historical novel on the Šimoniai family (Aukštujų Šimonių likimas). In old age, she returned to the district of her childhood every summer (her summer home is now a museum).

The central character, Buše Pikčiurnienė, has economic ambitions when the First World War breaks out but is furious when her elder son, patriotic for Germany due to his education, is the first to volunteer to serve in the German army:
“When war broke out in 1914 Pikčiurnienė rejoiced. She had debts and she felt war would be her salvation. And even more than that. People would be glad to work for a crust of bread now. Everyone knew that there was always hunger in war-time, and after it too!
There was only one fly in the ointment; her son Jurgis announced that he was going to volunteer for the army at once. Volunteer! He was barely 19, he would not be called up for some time yet.”
She tries to reason with Jurgis:
“D'you want to be killed like a dog out there? D'you want to have the crows pick out your eyes?”
Her predictions prove correct; Jurgis never returns.

The hero of the novel is Jurgis Būblys, husband of Trudė, one of Buše’s sisters. He comes home from the war discontent and speaking of revolution. His friend, Adomas, recalls his removal from the Western Front:
“I threw my gun away, Jurgis, in the Argonne Forest. There was a gas attack. When I came to, I knew I was in a dark forest but where I was or what had happened I could not remember...
But all the same, I felt sort of guilty. Maybe I ought to have done differently. But I didn't know how. We did know, all of us, what was happening in the East, over there in Russia. But we had nobody to start things. Only those that could talk and dream... And then when I came out of hospital, it was all over.”
Jurgis becomes the local Communist hero, people telling their grandchildren about him:
“how eagerly they listen to tales about Jurgis Būblys, who not only fought for all that the people of Benagiai now possess but gave his life for it!”

The Second Seal

This First World War thriller, published in 1950, is one of 11 novels featuring the Duc de Richleau character. Jean Armand Duplessis, the tenth Duc de Richleau, is a French aristocrat but has been politically disgraced and is in exile. On the other side of his family, he is the Count Königstein, giving him strong connections to Austria-Hungary and to the wider German-speaking aristocracy. He’s also related on the maternal side to the Russian royal family. As a career soldier, he served in the Ottoman army during the Balkan wars and in one incident saved the life of a senior Serbian officer. He has taken British citizenship in admiration of the strong principles of the Empire. With a foot in almost every camp as the outbreak of the First World War looms, he’s sent by the British authorities to Belgrade to investigate the activities of the ultranationalist secret society, the Black Hand. He ends up trying to prevent the assassination of Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. On the outbreak of war, he retained his officer’s rank in the Ottoman army, and had been offered senior military positions in Serbia, Austria and Britain. Through his Austrian role, he visits the German military headquarters in Aachen in an attempt to persuade von Moltke to move German forces from the Western Front to the Eastern Front, allowing the French and British forces to recover from the initial onslaught. Added to all of this confusion is his clandestine affair with Archduchess Ilona Theresa, granddaughter of Emperor Franz Josef of Austria.

The author, Dennis Wheatley (born 8 January 1897), grew up in London. He fought in the First World War as a lieutenant in the Royal Field Artillery. He dedicated this novel to “the memory of that fine soldier and friend, the late Colonel H.N. Clarke” and for “those good companions of my youth, J. Albert Davis and Douglas Gregson” and for “those other officers, N.C.O.s and men with whom I had the honour to serve in the 2nd/1st City of London Brigade R.F.A. from September 1914”. He served in Flanders from August 1917 to May 1918 before being invalided out of the war. He began writing short stories in the 1920s and his first novel, featuring the Duc de Richleau, was published in 1933.

In an early scene in the novel, the central character is in London in April 1914 and explains to a senior British official his desire to serve in the British army:
“since I am debarred from fighting for the country of my birth, I wish to fight for the country of my adoption. I arrived in England yesterday with the hope that I should be in ample time to make arrangements which would ensure my being in a post suited to my abilities when war breaks out.”
When war does break out, he’s in Vienna observing the mobilisation of troops:
“Meanwhile bodies of smiling troops swung through the streets, lustily singing gay marching songs. The great majority of them were reservists, or young conscripts, on their way to training camps, where they would spend several weeks, if not months, being knocked into shape before they were called on to face the enemy... De Richleau watched it all with unsmiling eyes. He was no pessimist by nature but ever since he had reached manhood war had been his game. He had seen too many youngsters, grinning, vigorous, determined at one moment, and screaming like maniacs from shell-rent flesh or smashed bone the next; too many still, twisted corpses and pulped, messy heads. But his own effort to prevent the colossal madness had failed.”

Black Bethlehem

This tripartite novel, published in 1947, is set in London, where the author lived, during the Second World War. The narrative opens and concludes with a blitz scene in February 1944 in which John Everyman, an air-raid warden, is injured:
“He was crossing the road when the ground heaved under him. The last thing he saw was the red light in the northern sky. Then all light and sound ran together and vanished, and he fell down, down into darkness.” He and other characters in the novel express a sympathy not only for those being bombed in London but also those being bombed in Berlin: “The whole thing: this war — the bombing here — the awful bombing of Berlin — the lives wasted — the goodness wasted.”

The author, Lettice Cooper (born 3 September 1897), was born near Manchester and grew up in Leeds. She began writing fiction aged 7. Her brother, Leonard, was invalided out of the army and also took to writing fiction. Her first novel, The Lighted Room, was published in 1925. She went on to write as many as 20 novels. During the Second World War, she met Eileen Blair, wife of George Orwell. She and Orwell feature in Black Bethlehem as Ann and Christopher Drake.

In Part I of the novel, set in April 1945, the main character is Lieutenant Alan Marriot, recently invalided after a battle siege in the Dutch countryside. In a visit to his Aunt Hilda they discuss the war and she recalls the First World War:
“ ‘My friends have mostly been killed.’...
‘Some of them I know, and I'm very sorry. But not all. You mustn't exaggerate. Thank heaven the casualties in France haven't been nearly as bad as we all expected.’
‘Those are just numbers!’
She blinked at what must seem to her nonsense.
‘If you remember, as I do, the terrible slaughter in the last war.’
He said wildly, ‘It's a pity everybody didn't remember it.’ ”
He tells her about his friend Justin, who had recently been killed in action, and she reveals that her fiancé had been killed in the First World War:
“I don't know whether anyone has ever told you, I was engaged to be married just at the beginning of the last war. His name was David, David Nicholls. He was at school with your father. He was killed at Paschendale. After that I felt I must do everything I could to see that he hadn't died in vain, that it wasn't all wasted.”

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow

This novel, published in 1947, is set in Australia in the 24th century. The central character, Knarf, has written a historical novel about Harry Munster, a veteran of the First World War, and is discussing it with a colleague. His novel, Little World Left Behind, begins in 1924 and brings Munster’s story through unemployment during the years of the Depression and then on to the Second World War. Although Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow was published in 1947, it was written in 1941 and 1942 and it, therefore, describes the latter years of the Second World War predictively rather than historically (though, of course, Knarf himself is describing it historically).

The authors, Marjorie Barnard (born 16 August 1897) and Flora Eldershaw (born 16 March 1897), collaborated under the amalgam nom-de-plume, M. Barnard Eldershaw. They met as students at the University of Sydney. One of Eldershaw’s brothers, John St Elmo Eldershaw, served as a gunner on the Western Front and died soon after the war. Their first collaborative novel, A House is Built, was published in 1929. During the 1930s they hosted an influential literary salon in their flat in suburban Sydney. Their collaboration became more difficult and less productive after Eldershaw moved to Canberra in 1941. This was to be their last collaborative novel. It was severely censored and only published in its completed, uncensored form for the first time in 1983.

Harry Munster had served with the Australian forces during the First World War. At an early stage of Knarf’s novel, Munster considers his family’s struggle to sustain themselves and remembers his experience as a soldier:
“His mind strayed back to the war. The times his belly had been sticking to his backbone, times when he'd been perishing and the food had come up stone cold, or there hadn't been any, because Fritz had got the ration party. Times when to lie down and sleep in the mud, even to the thunder of a barrage, would have been the sweetest thing in the world, times when he would have welcomed death itself for the sleep there was in it. He'd sworn then if he ever came back he'd not be ungrateful again for food and sleep, quiet, and a body free from lice.”

When he is caught up in the turmoil of the blitz in Sydney during the Second World War, his traumatised mind returns him to a battle scene at Gallipoli in 1915 and another scene from the Western Front in 1916:
“Another crash came and the blast threw him down, spreadeagled on the road. It was a minute before he stirred, got to his knees and then to his feet. His chin was wet with blood but he felt nothing — only the sky was red with whirling black stars and the ground rose steeply under his feet. He was running up the slope at Gaba Tepe, carrying his equipment, his lungs bursting, the surf of the Turkish fire just ahead of him; he was caught by their own barrage in the crumbling French village out of Bouchevenes, stumbling blind and suffocated towards a shelter that had gone.”

Strange Fruit

This novel, published in 1944, is set in a small town in Georgia in the 1920s and portrays the interaction between the two communities, black and white. The central character, Tracy Deen, has been leading a wayward life, including a relationship with a young black woman called Nonnie Anderson. Towards the end of the novel, he seeks to become a reformed character by attending church, getting engaged to respectable Dorothy and distancing himself from Nonnie. His decisive actions, however, have violent consequences.

The author, Lillian Smith (born 12 December 1897), grew up in northern Florida. After her studies, she spent several years teaching in eastern China before returning home in 1925. In 1936 she launched a quarterly literary magazine that encouraged liberal expression by authors from both communities of the South. She closed the magazine in 1945 to concentrate on her own writing. This was the first of several novels. She was renowned as one of the first prominent Southern white authors to write about and speak out openly against racism and segregation. She was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame in 2000.

In the early chapters of this novel, we learn about the army service of the central character, Tracy Deen, and what the soldiers thought about when far from home:
“Months in the Ruhr Valley left you time to think. Cut off from everything that makes it hard to think at home, it was easier... Most of the men didn't talk much about ideas. It was women... When they talked about women Tracy would find something else to do. There was no woman he wanted to talk about or think about.”
When he is sent with his unit to Marseille, however, the change of atmosphere starts him thinking:
“He liked the place and used to walk for hours at night on the streets, feeling something about it...
One night — it's hard to know how a thing gets in your mind — he began to remember Nonnie. He was walking along a street whose name he never knew. There was music somewhere and voices somewhere, and in the shadows a girl softly accosted him. He did not answer her but a tone in her voice sounded in his mind after he passed her. There was a feeling in his mind too that he had been here before... the music, the easy soft laughter... He thought: I'd like to dance with Nonnie... She had never been something to think about until then... Now she was here.”
Such was the power of nostalgia in the soldier serving overseas.

The Last of Summer

This evocative novel, published in 1943, is set in West Clare during the last few days of countdown to the outbreak of the Second World War. The central character, Angèle, the French daughter of a Clare man, decides to visit his family home for the first time. There she meets for the first time her Uncle Ned’s widow, Hannah, and children, Tom, Martin and Josephine. Though they are first cousins, she and Tom quickly fall in love and become engaged before the outbreak of war in her native country intervenes.

The author, Kate O'Brien (born 3 December 1897), grew up in Limerick, spending much of her childhood in boarding school after the death of her mother. She studied English and French at University College Dublin and began work as a teacher. While working as a governess in the Basque city of Bilbao from 1922 to1923, she began to write fiction. Her novel, Mary Lavelle, published in 1936, was largely based on her own experiences there. Her debut novel, Without My Cloak, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction in 1931. She spent most of her life in England away from the conservative strictures of de Valera’s Ireland.

Tom Kernahan, father of the central character, had left home in 1909 and never returned. When his brother, Cornelius, is asked about the First World War, he recalls his own limited experience and what he knew of Tom’s involvement:
“Were you in that other war, Corney?"
"No. I volunteered for the South Irish Horse, but they rejected me. Said I was C3, if you'll believe me! And Ned didn't go either — he had a wife and two children already, and the whole of this place depending on him. He made a good deal of money out of it, I can't deny. But Hannah was anti-British even then, and wouldn't have let him join up, if he'd wanted...
Tom was in it though... I remember Ned hearing some way that he was attached to a French regiment, and doing liaison work with the British. I remember we were delighted it was for the French he was fighting. And then in 1917 Ned had a postcard from him to say he was invalided out. That was the last news I ever had of him until nine years later, when Ned told me he was dead.”

Towards the end of the novel, Martin resolves to follow in his uncle’s footsteps, intending to join the French army. His sister has immediate plans to go to Brussels to become a nun. We are left to wonder what would have happened to Angèle and her cousins, Irish and French, during the war that had just been declared.