Seven of the best war novels

THE MOTHER of all war novels, to adapt a phrase from Saddam Hussein, must be “War and Peace”. But, just as the BBC’s “Desert Island Discs” gives every castaway a Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare, so we will plonk on your bookshelves Leo Tolstoy’s epic, assuming they are not already sagging under its weight, and move on. Here are seven of the best non-Tolstoyan war novels, arranged in the chronological order of the conflicts they are about. Four (“All Quiet on the Western Front”, “Stalingrad”, “The Bridge over the River Kwai”  and “The Sorrow of War”) were written in languages other than English. We chose books whose subject matter spans a range of wars around the world—from the trenches of Flanders to the jungles of Vietnam. They also express the full ambit of conflict, from the terror of hand-to-hand combat to the emotional scars that never heal, which can lead to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). “War is a crucial, deeply ingrained part of human history,” wrote Magaret MacMillan, a historian. Novelists have been as perceptive about it as practitioners of her profession.