At the Great War Fiction blog, George Simmers reviews Ernst Jünger’s Sturm, now available from Telos Press. You can purchase your copy in our online store, and save 20% with the coupon code BOOKS20.
An excerpt from the review:
Alexis Walker’s very readable translation gives us a chance to read a subtle novella about an intellectual in the trenches who sees the age of industrial-scale war as deeply dehumanising, yet recognises that this war has given him a sense of identity, and of community with others, which no peacetime experience could match.
Lieutenant Sturm may be a partial self-portrait of the author. His story begins when the third company are expecting a British bombardment and assault. Tension is high, and it is not unusual for some soldiers to be transformed by terror, as though they had seen ghosts. One morning the comrades found one of these quiet men dead on the latrine, swimming in blood. His right foot was bare; it seemed that he had pointed the weapon at his heart and pulled the trigger with his toes.
Read the full review here.
