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Four Soldiers: A Novel Kindle Edition
Hubert Mingarelli
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Editorial Reviews
Review
Praise for Four Soldiers:
Longlisted for the 2019 Man Booker International Prize
“Most movingly, it sketches the poignantly fragile friendships they develop in the shadow of so much death. . . . Its simplicity lends it grandeur. One thinks of Maxim Gorky, or even the early sketches of Tolstoy.”
—The Wall Street Journal
“Four Soldiers is no hectic and chaotic war novel. It unfolds in short, tightly focused chapters, and in spare, crystalline prose (beautifully translated by Sam Taylor). . . . The last electrifying pages resemble one of the more violent stories from Isaac Babel's Red Cavalry. To say more would be to spoil all. Suffice to say that Mingarelli manages to salvage tenderness from tragedy, leaving us with a poignant twist and a lasting impression—not to mention an acute reminder that these are not valiant, worldly men marching into battle but petrified, inexperienced boys.”
—Malcolm Forbes, Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Ian McEwan is a fan of French writer Hubert Mingarelli’s previous novel; this new one bears Hilary Mantel’s seal of approval. It’s a simple story about simple pleasures—the smell of woodsmoke, a newly washed blanket, a secret shared. But these everyday moments of happiness are hardened into bright and priceless diamonds by the pressure of the circumstances that surround them: the horror and misery of the Russian Civil War. . . . A tale that can easily be read in a sitting.”
—Daily Mail (UK)
“This short, spare story of friendship between young soldiers is beautifully evoked and deeply touching. . . . In the most simple, unshowy prose Mingarelli illustrates the power of small shared moments between pawns of war whose youth should have seen them making happy plans, still optimistic and full of brio. Brief flashes of warmth and humour light their blackening sky like shooting stars, eventually fizzing out to leave them engulfed in darkness again. Hilary Mantel called this book ‘a small miracle’; days after reading it, I would agree.”
—The Big Issue (UK)
“Profound and affecting. . . . A captivating study of companionship and loyalty among men in combat.”
—The National (Scotland)
“Spare, matter-of-fact and masterfully controlled.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“I am astonished by Four Soldiers. I have never read anything like it, yet it is one of those books you feel must always have existed, a classic of writing about the human condition. Short and deceptively simple, it reads like a message from the unheard, news from unwitnessed lives, building letter by letter to its crushing final page. A small miracle of a book, perfectly imagined and perfectly achieved.”
—Hilary Mantel, author of Booker Prize-winning novels Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies
Praise for Hubert Mingarelli's A Meal in Winter:
“The book’s deceptive directness and simplicity, and its muted undercurrents of horror, will make many think of the stories of Ernest Hemingway. This is painful, unconsoling reading, but also a reminder of the power a short, perfect work of fiction can wield.”
—Wall Street Journal
“Stark and profound.”
—New York Times
“Fine reading, not just for those interested in the war.”
—Library Journal
“The command of tone and voice sustains tension until the very last page of a novel that will long resonate in the reader’s conscience.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred)
“Masterful. . . . Mingarelli offers a new twist on the Holocaust novel. His spare prose, crisply translated by Sam Taylor, adds to the narrative’s intensity and keeps you turning the pages until its poignant conclusion.”
—The Huffington Post
“It is 138 profound pages of horror and humanity.”
—Book of the Year, the Irish Times
“Short, powerful, vivid, and utterly compelling.”
—The Jewish Chronicle
“Haunting. . . . With devastating concision, Mingarelli and his translator, Sam Taylor, carry the moral dilemma to an understated yet stunning conclusion.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred)
“A luminous tale. . . . The most moving book I have read for a long time."
—The Independent on Sunday
"A masterpiece.”
—The Independent
“This strong and simple story packs a mighty punch.”
—The Times (London)
“Beautiful and disturbing, complex and surprising. . . . This is not easy for the reader to handle, but Mingarelli knows what he is doing.”
—The Herald (Glasgow)
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : The New Press (October 9, 2018)
- File size : 1146 KB
- Publication date : October 9, 2018
- Language: : English
- ASIN : B079G6KMVS
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Print length : 144 pages
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Lending : Not Enabled
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Best Sellers Rank:
#1,117,069 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #7,719 in War Fiction (Kindle Store)
- #15,348 in War Fiction (Books)
- #37,619 in Literary Fiction (Kindle Store)
- Customer Reviews:
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Top reviews from the United States
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This one is really hard to review, some people may absolutely love it, and find it enthralling and poetic, not so much for me. I did want to finish it, but it did not bring out a lot of feelings one way or the other for the characters. A few of the things that happened I would consider rather odd.
I was given the opportunity to receive this book from The New Press through NetGalley. The opinions expressed in this review are completely my own. This one gets 3***’s.
The day comes too soon, they have to leave camp. Scared and freezing, they march off in the dark of night.
This is also where the book marches away from me. The ending is odd and left me very confused. What happened?! I don't understand at all. I might have to reread.
I really the characters in this book. The friendship they form despite the horrible situation they are in, is truly beautiful.
The morose, panic-stricken scenes were an actual testament to the slow decay of the mind when subjected to the endless pitfalls of combat troops in war. Life as they had known it slowly dragged on one impossible day at a time.
Four soldiers met up and became best of friends while they were attached to the Red Army and fought on the Romanian front. Times were beyond difficult; they were unbearable. In order to survive, they were forced to eat their horses and scavenge whatever food and provisions they could gather from local homes they passed along the way. The days were bitter cold, the night's intolerably freezing. That was cause enough for the war to take a break and wait it out till spring. It would not go away.
With the rest of their company, the four comrades built a hut for themselves and made camp hidden away in the middle of a forest. They did whatever they could to occupy the endless days and nights. Mindless hours of shooting dice for cigarettes helped ease their troubled minds. Clear days were spent sitting by a pond concealed from the rest of their company within the reeds. They knew their time was running out. War would not let go.
As always, time had a way of marching on, and in their case, too fast. Spring had finally arrived and it was time for them to pull out, time for some to sacrifice their lives for a cause they could not begin to comprehend. All that waited ahead for them down the dirt road were bullets and bombs. If lucky, their demise would come quickly.
I extend my gratitude to NetGalley and The New Press for this ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.
I received this e-ARC from NetGalley & publisher "The New Press", in exchange for my own fair & unbiased review. All opinions are my own.
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