The Middle Parts of Fortune

It is the finest and noblest book of men in war that I have ever read. I read it over once each year to remember how things really were so that I will never lie to myself nor to anyone else about them.  —Ernest HemingwayThey can say what they bloody well like but we're a fuckin' fine mob.Deep in the mud in the stench of the Somme Bourne is trying his best to stay alive. There he finds the intense fraternity of war and fear unlike anything he has ever known. Frederick Manning's novel was first published anonymously in 1929. The honesty with which he wrote about the horror the boredom and the futility of war is unmatched. Thisgrim sardonic tale led William Boyd to say this is the finest novel to come out of the First World War.