Trains of Thought: Paris to Omaha Beach, Memories of a Wartime Youth

by Victor Brombert

In an unforgettable addition to the literature of memoir, one of America’s preeminent literary scholars tells his story of coming of age in France during the buildup to the Second World War. As a Jewish youth in France during the 1930s, Victor Brombert’s heady explorations of sex and love were cut short by the rise of Nazi power and the Vichy Regime. His family narrowly escaped to New York, where Brombert joined the U.S. Army, only to return to Europe to fight on the beaches of Normandy and in the Battle of the Bulge. As he shuttles between the stations of his life, Brombert’s narrative recaptures the textures of childhood, the horrors of war, and his own discovery of a sustaining passion for literature. By turns melancholy and erotic, his memoir is also a meditation on memory itself, and a Proustian re-creation of a lost time and place.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, France

352 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2002

About the author

Victor Henri Brombert was an American scholar of 19th and 20th century literature, the Henry Putnam University Professor at Princeton University.

Reviews

[KOMET · Rating 4 out of 5]

A powerfully affective memoir evoking the author's youth in France and the U.S., which was heavily impacted by the Second World War.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author of this book taught a literature class I took in college, which is why I bought the book in the first place. What a great memoir! Brombert tells the story of his life with amazing eloquence.