The Vintage Book of War Stories

by Sebastian Faulks (Editor), Jörg Hensgen (Editor)

In this unique and compelling anthology, Sebastian Faulks has collected the best fiction about war in the 20th century. Ranging from the First World War to the Gulf War, these stories depict a soldier`s experience from call-ups battle and comradship to leave, hospital and trauma in later life. Truely international in scope, this anthology includes stories by Erich Maria Remarque and Pat Barker, Issac Babel and Ernest Hemingway , Heinrich Boll and Norman Mailer, JG Ballard and Tim O`Brian Julian Barnes and Louis de Barnieres. Together they form a powerful and moving evocation of the horors of war.

Genres: War, Short Stories, History, World War I, Classics, Anthologies, Historical

448 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Sebastian Faulks is a British novelist, journalist, and broadcaster best known for his acclaimed historical novels set in France, including The Girl at the Lion d'Or, Birdsong, and Charlotte Gray. Alongside these, he has written contemporary fiction, a James Bond continuation novel (Devil May Care), and a Jeeves homage (Jeeves and the Wedding Bells). A former literary editor and journalist, Faulks gained widespread recognition with Birdsong, which solidified his literary reputation. He has also appeared regularly on British media, notably as a team captain on BBC Radio 4's The Write Stuff, and authored the TV tie-in Faulks on Fiction. Honored as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and appointed CBE for his services to literature, Faulks continues to publish widely, with The Seventh Son released in 2023.

Reviews

[m d · Rating 4 out of 5]

As it's often the case with collections of short stories, not every story in this anthology is equally good. There were some that hadn't touched me, hadn't spoken to me at all, and some that got ***** almost from the first sentence I'd read. And because the stories have come from the other books, I ended up adding few more points to my neverending "to be read" list.

The funny thing is, one of my favourite quotes from this anthology has nothing to do with war. It's come from "Wartime lies" by Louis Begley: "Autumn is the sweetest season in Poland, redolent of harvest smells and promise, a time to pick mushrooms in the moist shade of giant trees." I couldn't agree more!

Ps. It's taken me so long to read this book not because I haven't enjoyed it, but because I've lost it. That's what happens when your house is full of books, and you are getting old and forgetful...

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

What was it like in the war? It's a common question and the authors have put together a collage of accounts, none are the whole books worth, but just snapshot chapters wriiten by a variety of authors with enough skill to give meaningful detail and emotional depth giving us the readers a glimpse of war as it lives, either in reality or fictional re-creation. You might want to go on and read the whole books ( taken from a broad set of sources) or be content with the after effects of what has been told you. Either way, you can appreciate the effort given.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

A large selection of authors are represented in this anthology, which covers most of the major conflicts of the 20th century. While the standard of writing is uniformly good, the reading experience is ultimately spoiled by the fact that the majority of the pieces are excerpts from novels rather than self-contained short stories. This makes a few of the pieces in particular very difficult to understand. While the moral point of the majority of the pieces is anti-war, the style of writing chosen for this book is mostly conventional. It would have been more interesting to have a couple of experimental pieces to give some variation.

[Bluebell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Based on the subject matter, these stories are obviously going to be sad and mournful to read. Still they are good stories in themselves. Just maybe don't sit down to read the whole book from back to front in one go. I'd say it's better to read a few at a time, just because there are a lot of them all based on the same theme (war). There are extracts from some quite well known novels.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Contains some amazing writing - some of my favorite authors as well: William Boyd, Louis De Bernieres, Pat Barker, Siegfried Sassoon, John Fowles, Michael Ondaatje, and Ernest Hemingway. Discovered some new favorites too particularly Tim O'Brien "How to tell a True War Story" ...

[Leila · Rating 4 out of 5]

War stories, edited by Sebastian Faulks and Jorg Hensgen was actually a mistake I made.

I meant to buy a book written by Faulks and ended up getting this one, which he compiled along Hensgen. The introduction though, that was pleasing, so at least I got Faulk's writing there.

As for the stories themselves, I was more than pleasantly surprised. A couple of favourites:

- "Hiroshima Joe", due to its crude and pure descriptions that show us a little bit of what a post bomb city could feel like.

- "How long it takes for a man to die!" made me see enemies' relationships in a new way

- "We are about to kill a man" shows us a bit of the thought process of those that don't want to really take part in the war, and what they do if their hands are forced.

- "My heart finally broke in Naples" got me yearning to meet these Italian families, and immerse myself in that culture. For that, especially this year that we couldn't travel, I am incredibly grateful.

- "Wartime lies" showed a lot of female cunningness, I loved loved loved the way Tania managed to create alternatives time and time again.

Most stories (or extracts from books) were self-concludent, so that was excellent work done by the editors right there. While you had some that had a bit of an open ending, they were satisfactory enough; I could flow to my own way of continuing them or leave the characters happily in their own bubble.

I've already recommended this book to friends, and the review is rushed since it will be handed in to someone else tomorrow!

[Gowri N. · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars, rounded up.

I enjoy short story collections because (1) they are ideal reading when I am struggling with time or attention (2) they let me discover new authors and (3) I believe that anyone can write a novel but it takes particular skill to construct a striking story in miniature. Given how tough it is, every anthology is bound to have at least a couple of lemons.

This one didn't. And yet—especially given the subject matter of 20th century wars—I am surprised that very few of the stories have stayed with me. Perhaps it is because a majority of them are not standalone short stories but chapters from novels. This makes them feel incomplete (obviously) and also don't give a true glimpse into the author's storytelling skills.

Reading these back to back was also depressing—which is to be expected somewhat, given that the horrors of war form the backdrop of all of them; but it also makes me wonder about the editor's selection. I think there could have been a wider diversity of styles and perspectives. And out of 40 authors, only 2 were women. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Anthony O’Brien · Rating 5 out of 5]

War is a horrible thing. But differently horrible under different circumstances. Faulks and Henssen have done a great job in assembling these 40 excerpts from ward off the 20th century. That is wars that involved the Western powers. The settings cover the trenches of WW1 and the jungles of Vietnam. They also include civilian settings such as Warsaw and Greece. 37 of the 40 stories are written by men, although another (Louis Begley’s “Wartime Lies”) skilfully tells the story of a woman prisoner. While the majority of stories focus on combat, others (“The Postcard” (Heinrich Boll) show the impact of war on ordinary lives. The writers selected are all highly talented, so the quality is uniformly high. You’ll read things you’d rather not know about. But you’ll put this book down with a deeper understanding of the human experience of war, the trauma experienced by soldiers and civilians, and perhaps with disdain for those who prosecute war with little regard for its human impacts.

[Matt · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was really looking forward to this book. It some how appeared on my to read pile and no one knows who’s it is.
Sadly the book is just snippets of war stories bundled together to form a poor anthology. No sooner are you getting into the chapter you are suddenly into another story in another totally different battle somewhere.
Just couldn’t take to it as it’s not my style of reading. Total pity as some of the extracts are from some of my favourite reads.

[Toby Bond · Rating 3 out of 5]

A series of extracts from war novels, by and large focussing on the futility and horror of war. It is an odd book, i wouldnt have bought it if it wasn't in a charity shop, as i'd prefer to read an entire novel, it was unfulfilling somehow, almost as though i hadnt read a full book at all.

[Shrenik · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought given events in Ukraine this book of short stories by different authors on different wars would be worthwhile to read. Some were very well written, gripping and transported the reader into the trenches and jungles - others I found unreadable!

[Lysergius · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of war stories. Some good and some mediocre.

[Anita · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a collection of a huge number of short stories. Of course some are better than others but I enjoyed far more of them than I disliked.

[Jantine · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a fan of war stories, many of the fragments included in this book were to my liking. I'm a fan of them because they attempt to tell the untellable, and each author does it differently; some can make it real, others become mired in clichés. However, though stories from different sides of the conflicts were included in this anthology, it still felt very American-oriented to me. The editors felt compelled to include classics like The Naked and the Dead and A Farewell to Arms, but left out For Whom the Bell Tolls and Slaughterhouse Five, instead choosing a commentary upon it by Vonnegut - which I did like, but which seemed jarring considering its position between the fragments of fiction. Overall I thought the view it presented was fairly fragmented, as it tried to incorporate many different views but overstretched itself doing so. Some fragments worked well out of context but certainly not all; some were very technical and some were very romantic. In my opinion this book should have been thicker and either have included fragments from all the famous books about wars in the twentieth century - so also For Whom the Bell Tolls, Goodbye to All That, The Diary of Anne Frank - or purposely have stuck to the lesser-known ones in order to get a view of the wars from unexpected and non-Allied perspectives. The editors have chosen not to include a lot of lightly fictionalised autobiography; would that they had, for those narratives are most compelling; and so many of the fragments are based on the author's own experience anyway that the distinction between fiction and non-fiction is moot. As Tim O'Brien states in his fragment: "In many cases a true war story cannot be believed. . .In other cases you can't even tell a true war story. Sometimes it's just beyond telling."

[Istvan Zoltan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Faulks and Hensgen have done an amazing job. They have compiled short stories and passages from book that can provide one with insights about large chunks of what war is like. The book does not offer a comprehensive view, and does not aim at that. The main emphasis is on the experience of combatants and people participating directly in the drafting, the reporting, the decision making, human experiments, and the killing. The pieces are almost all outstanding both from a stylistic point of view - brilliant command of language, of literary tools - and from a psychological, historical point of view as well.
I can only recommend this volume. It can enrich the understanding of any person. It can serve one of the greatest goals of literature: to make people more aware of the real life complexity of situations, and of undermining rosy-narratives and stupid, glorifying views of war fabricated by states and corporations.

[Naiwrita Sinha · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is certainly one of the best collections of wartime stories I have read so far, and there's been quite a few. Consisting of tales written by the famed and not so famed of world literature, the book captures the many faces of war: bloody battlefields, broken families, broken hearts, undaunted spirits, and sheer will. The anthology spans major wars fought in the twentieth century, and at the end, one can't help but be struck by the immense similarity among them all. A must read for all those who love history and share a morbid fascination for turbulent times.

[Jo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Anthology of stories written about various 20th century conflicts. This was a bit strange in some respects because they were extracts from novels rather than short stories. I enjoyed it to a certain degree but some of the tales seemed to be just about starting to get going when they ended.

[Rhonda · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great book of short stories.

[Avril]

I tried, but after the first few stories I was overwhelmed by the horror snd despair portrayed. so I didn't finish the book.

[Kirsty · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heartbreaking, important, challenging, and well put together. Some of the stories are heartbreaking. A great collection, which is sure to delight any history buff.

[Jerry Peace · Rating 4 out of 5]

"We were no more than ants in an ant heap."