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The great swindle

"The year is 1918, the war on the Western Front all but over. An ambitious officer, Lieutenant Henry D'Aulnay-Pradelle, sends two soldiers over the top and then surreptitiously shoots them in the back to incite his men to attack the German lines. When another of D'Aulnay-Pradelle'...

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Main Author: Lemaître, Pierre, 1951- (Author)
Other Authors: Wynne, Frank (Translator)
Format: Books Print Book
Language: English
French
Published: New York : MacLehose Press, 2015.
Subjects:
World War, 1914-1918 > Fiction.
Veterans > France > Fiction.
Swindlers and swindling > Fiction.
France > History > 1914-1940 > Fiction.
Historical fiction > France.
Summary: "The year is 1918, the war on the Western Front all but over. An ambitious officer, Lieutenant Henry D'Aulnay-Pradelle, sends two soldiers over the top and then surreptitiously shoots them in the back to incite his men to attack the German lines. When another of D'Aulnay-Pradelle's soldiers, Albert Maillard, reaches the bodies and discovers how they died, the lieutenant shoves him into a shell hole to silence him. Albert is rescued by fellow soldier, the artist Edouard Péricourt, who takes a bullet in the face. The war ends and both men recover, but Edouard is permanently disfigured, and fakes his death to prevent his family from seeing him as a cripple. In gratitude for Edouard's rescue, Albert becomes the injured man's companion and caregiver. Finding that the postwar gratitude for the soldiers' service is nothing more than lip-service to an empty idea, the two men scramble to survive, ultimately devising a scam to take money for never-to-be-built war memorials from small towns. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Pradelle has married Edouard's sister Madeline and is running a scam of his own that involves the exhumation of war victims. In this sorrowful, heart-searching novel, the interwoven lives of these three men create a tapestry of the human condition as seen through the lens of war, revealing brutality and compassion, heroism and cowardice, in equal measure."--provided by publisher.
Item Description: "First published in French as Au revoir là-haut by Editions Albin Michel, Paris, in 2013."--T.p. verso.
Physical Description: 442 pages ; 24 cm
Bibliography: Includes bibliographical references (pages 441-442).
ISBN: 9781623659035 (hardcover)
1623659035 (hardcover)
Author Notes: Pierre Lemaitre is a French novelist, born in Paris in 1951. He is a former teacher of literature. His is the author of Camille, for which he won the Crime Writers' Association International Dagger. He and Fred Vargas won the Crime Writers' Association International Dagger for Alex. His novel, The Great Swindle, won the 2013 Prix Goncourt, France's leading literary award. In 2016, it won the International Dagger for the best crime novel not originally written in English.

(Bowker Author Biography)

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