by Mark Helprin
First published 1996
Alessandro Giuliani, now in his seventies, takes what he knows will be his final long walk. Along the way, he encounters a young illiterate factory worker and begins to share the story of his remarkable life. As a professor and war hero who once deserted, Alessandro spins tales of narrow escapes and desperate flights from danger. He speaks of loves that slipped away and others that found their mark, of encounters with madmen, dwarfs, and criminals from the underworld. Yet threading through all his stories runs the defining experience of his youth: the Great War itself. That conflict brought him face to face with a surreal procession of terrors that both shattered and shaped him. Through surviving its horrors, Alessandro discovered something unexpected about existence. The war taught him to recognize the strange magic woven into human life, the beauty that emerges even from absurdity. As he walks and talks, Alessandro wrestles with the great questions that have followed him through the decades: the nature of love and loss, the meaning of beauty and honor, and the reality of death that awaits us all.
Genres: literary-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, war, adventure, academic
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: unreliable-narrator
Period: 20th-Century
792 pages · Paperback · Avon
Content warnings: war