War and Turpentine

Before he died, the narrator's grandfather Urbain Martien left him a pair of handwritten exercise books; it takes three decades before the writer dares to read them and turn them into a book. They tell of a hard childhood among the poor of Ghent at the turn of the century, of the trenches of 1914 to 1918, whose brutality and pointlessness never let him go, and of a great love that died young. Urbain longed to be a painter and spent his life copying the work of others; a hero of the war, he was also humiliated as a Fleming. His grandson tries to do him justice.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Length

333 pages in the original

Genres

War, Family, Historical (assigned by AI)

Set in

Belgium

First published

2013 by De Bezige Bij

Author's age

62 when first published

ISBN

9789023476719 (original)

9781846558825 (Harvill Secker, United Kingdom)

9781101874028 (Pantheon Books, United States)

9780099598046 (Vintage, United Kingdom)

9781101872116 (Vintage, United States)

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Wikidata