Vietnam: The History of an Unwinnable War, 1945-1975

A war novel is a novel in which the primary action takes place in a field of armed combat, or in a domestic setting where the characters are... preoccupied with the preparations for, or recovery from, war. It is sometimes referred to as military fiction. The war novel's main roots lie in the epic poetry of the classical and medieval periods, especially Homer's The Iliad, Virgil's The Aeneid, the Old English saga Beowulf, and different versions of the legends of King Arthur. All of these epics were concerned with preserving the history or mythology of conflicts between different societies, while providing an accessible narrative that could reinforce the collective memory of a people. Other important influences on the war novel included the tragedies of such dramatists as Euripides, Seneca the Younger, Christopher Marlowe, and Shakespeare. Shakespeare's Henry V provided a model for how the history, tactics, and ethics of war could be combined in an essentially fictional framework.
more