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's soldiers, Albert...
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| Main Author: | |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Books Print Book |
| Language: | English French |
| Published: |
New York :
MacLehose Press,
2015.
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| 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. |
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| 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: | (Bowker Author Biography) |
