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The Children of Disaster

This epic saga unfolds in the turbulent interwar period, delving into the darker aspects of human nature like greed and the pursuit of power. The series masterfully captures the atmosphere of a war-torn Europe, where characters, often scarred by conflict, navigate a world of chaos in search of meaning and survival. It weaves a compelling narrative filled with unexpected twists, sharp wit, and profound reflections on illusions versus reality. Readers will find a gripping exploration of a lost generation grappling with the aftermath of war and the exploitation of ideals.

Mirror of our Sorrows
The Great Swindle
All Human Wisdom

Recommended Reading Order

  1. 1

    The Great Swindle

    • 464 pages
    • 17 hours of reading
    4.3(8199)Add rating

    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

    The Great Swindle
  2. 2
  3. 3

    The final novel in Pierre Lemaitre's between-the-wars trilogy - a riotous depiction of the Phoney War from the perspective of an unlikely group of people caught up in its chaos.

    Mirror of our Sorrows