LITERATURE OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR (EN 2040)
READING LISTS
These lists are divided into two main sections: (A) primary texts (including set texts) and background reading directly relevant to the whole module; (B) more specialized reading lists, particularly relevant to specific seminars and/or to possible essay topics
(A) PRIMARY and BACKGROUND
Primary reading (including set texts, which are asterisked)
Martin Amis , *Time’s Arrow or The Nature of the Offence
Simone de Beauvoir, The Blood of Others
Elizabeth Bowen, The Heat of the Day
Javier Cercas, Soldiers of Salamis
Anne Frank, * Diary of a Young Girl
Paul Fussell, ed., The Bloody Game: An Anthology of Modern War
Maggie Gee, The Burning Book
Natalia Ginzburg, * All Our Yesterdays
Günter Grass, *The Tin Drum
Henry Green, Caught , Loving
Vasily Grossman, *Life and Fate
Patrick Hamilton, The Slaves of Solitude
Joseph Heller , *Catch-22
John Hersey, * Hiroshima
Kazuo Ishiguro, * An Artist of the Floating World , The Remains of the Day
Primo Levi, If This Is A Man , The Truce
Norman Lewis, Naples ‘44
Norman Mailer, * The Naked and the Dead
Irène Némirovsky, * Suite Française
Jean-Paul Sartre, the Chemins de la liberté trilogy ( The Age of Reason , The Reprieve , * Iron in the
Soul )
W.G.Sebald, * Austerlitz
Jorge Semprún, The Long Voyage
Graham Swift, Shuttlecock
Michel Tournier, The Erl-King
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Slaughterhouse-Five
Evelyn Waugh, * Put Out More Flags ; the Sword of Honour trilogy ( Men at Arms , Officers and
Gentlemen , Unconditional Surrender )
Recommended background/secondary reading :
Bernard Bergonzi, Wartime and Aftermath: English Literature and its Background, 1939-1960 ,
1993
Martin Conway, Autobiographical memory: An Introduction , 1990
Martin Gilbert, Second World War , 1989

Paul Fussell, Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War , 1989
Jacob Golomb, In Search of Authenticitry: From Kierkegaard to Camus , 1995
Claire Gorrara, European Memories of the Second World War , 1999
Robert Hewison, Under Siege: Literary life in London 1939-45 , 1977
Holger Klein, John Flower and Eric Homberger, eds., The Second World War in Fiction , 1984
Adam Piette, Imagination at War: British Fiction and Poetry, 1939-45 (1995)
Mark Rawlinson, British Writing of the Second World War , 2000
Ernestine Schlant and J. Thomas Rimer, eds., Legacies and Ambiguities: Postwar Fiction and
Culture in West Germany and Japan , Baltimore, 1991
Linda M. Shires, British Poetry of the Second World War , 1985
George Steiner, Language and Silence: Essays 1958-1966 , 1967, esp. ‘Literature and Post-
History’
Victoria Stewart, Women’s Autobiography: War and Trauma , 2003
D.J.Taylor, After the War: The Novel and English Society since 1945 , 1993

(B) LISTS BY TOPIC
(the topics, in alphabetical order, are: American writing of WW2; The Blitz; Fiction and
History; France and Simone de Beauvoir; Germany and Günter Grass; the Holocaust; Italy and Natalia Ginzburg; Japan; Spain)
American literature : further reading
Fiction:
Joseph Heller, Catch-22 , 1961
.. .. Closing Time (sequel to Catch-22 ), 1994
John Hersey, A Bell for Adano , 1944
Norman Mailer, The Naked and the Dead , 1948
Marge Piercy, Gone to Soldiers , 1987
Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow , 1973
J.D. Salinger, “For Esme with Love and Squalor”, in For Esme with Love and Squalor and other stories, 1953
William Saroyan, The Adventures of Wesley Jackson , 1949
Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five , 1968
Drama:
Arthur Miller, All My Sons
.. .. Broken Glass
Reportage:
John Steinbeck, Once There Was A War , 1958
Criticism:
Leo Braudy, ed., Norman Mailer: A collection of critical essays , 1972
Paul Fussell, Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War , 1989
Alfred Kazin, Bright Book of Life: American Novelists and Storytellers from Hemingway to Mailer ,
1974
James Nagel, ed., Critical Essays on Joseph Heller , 1984
Richard Poirier, Mailer , 1972
Susan Schweik, A Gulf So Deeply Cut: American Women Poets and the Second World War , 1991
History:
Patrick J. Hearden, Roosevelt confronts Hitler: America’s entry into World War Two , 1987

Hugh Brogan, The Longman History of the United States , 1985, ch. 23, ‘The Reluctant Giant,
193345’

The Blitz and the bombing of Germany : Further reading
Novels set in the Blitz, or in which it has an important narrative role:
Elizabeth Bowen, The Heat of the Day (1948)
Henry Green, Caught (1943)
Graham Greene, The Ministry of Fear (1943)
Patrick Hamilton, The Slaves of Solitude (1972)
Philip Larkin, Jill (1946- bombing of Coventry)
See also:
William Sansom, The Blitz: Westminster at War (first published 1947 under the title Westminster at War ) - documentary account written by an imaginative writer
Andrew Sinclair, ed., The War Decade: An Anthology of the 1940s (1989), section 3, npp 67-93,
'Blitz'
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Slaughterhouse-Five (1968 - bombing of Dresden)
Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow (1973 - missile attacks on London in last phase of war)
The Bombing of Germany
Fiction:
Heinrich Böll, The Silent Angel (orig: Der Engel schwieg ) 1992, tr. 1994
Hubert Fichte, Detlev’s Imitations (orig: Detlevs Imitationen ), 1971 tr 1992
Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-5 , 1968
History and literary studies:
British Bombing Survey Unit, The Strategic Air War against Germany 1939-1945: report of the
Brtitish Bombing Survey Unit , 1998
Conrad C. Crane, Bombs, Cities and Civilians: American airpower strategy in World War II , 1993
Stephen A. Garrett, Ethics and Airpower in World War II: the British Bombing of German Cities ,
1993

Victor Gollancz, In Darkest Germany , 1947
Max Hastings, Bomber Command , 1979
Alan J. Levine, The Strategic Bombing of Germany, 1940 —1945 , 1992
W.G.Sebald, On the Natural History of Destruction (orig: Luftkrieg und Literatur ), 1999, tr. 2003
Susanne Vees-Gulani, Trauma and guilt: literature of wartime bombing in Germany , 2003
[A library keyword search under ‘Bombing’ will show number of other relevant materials, including about the Blitz on Britain, and about subsequent bombing campaigns.]

Fiction and History: some critical studies
Elisabeth Deeds Ermarth, Sequel to History: Postmodernism and the Crisis of Representational
Time (1992)
Avron Fleishman, The English Historical Novel: Walter Scott to Virginia Woolf (1971)
Linda Hutcheon, The Politics of Postmodernism (1989)
Georg Lukács, The Historical Novel (1969)
Jim Reilly, Shadowtime: History and Representation in Hardy, Conrad and George Eliot , 1993

France and Simone de Beauvoir : Further reading
Simone de Beauvoir
Other fiction: She Came to Stay (‘L’Invitée’, 1943, tr. 1949)
The Mandarins (‘Les Mandarins’, 1954, tr. 1957)
Autobiography): Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter (‘Mémoires d’une fille rangée’, 1958, tr. 1960)
The Prime of Life (‘La Force de l’âge’, 1960, tr. 1962)
Force of Circumstance (‘La Force des choses’, 1963, tr. 1965)
Philosophy and social studies: The Second Sex (‘Le deuxième sexe’, 1949, tr. 1953)
Works on de Beauvoir:
Nancy Bauer, Simone de Beauvoir, Philosophy, and Feminism , 2001
Ursula Tidd, Simone de Beauvoir: Gender and Testimony , 1999
Elizabeth Fallaize, ed., Simone de Beauvoir: A Critical Reader , 1998
Edward Fulbrook and Kate Fulbrook, Simone de Beauvoir: A Critical Introduction , 1998
Margaret A Simons, Beauvoir and The Second Sex : Feminism, Race and the Origins of
Existentialism , 1999
Related primary works:
Marguerite Duras, La douleur , 1985, tr. 1986
Irène Némirovsky, Suite Française , written 1940-41, published 2004 (tr. 2006)
Jean-Paul Sartre, Iron in the Soul (‘La Mort dans l’âme’, 1949, tr. 1950)
.. .. The Age of Reason (L'Age de raison’, 1945, tr. 1947)
.. .. The Reprieve (Le Sursis, 1945, tr. 1948)
See also Sartre's War Diaries , 1984
Michel Tournier, The Erl-King (“Le Roi des aulnes”, 1970, tr. 1972)
Films:
Au revoir les enfants (dir. Louis Malle, 1987)
Night and Fog (“Nuit et bruillard”, dir. Alain Resnais, 1955)
Literary and social-historical background:
Margaret Atack, Literature and the French Resistance: Cultural Politics and Narrative Forms,
1940-1950 , 1989
Carmen Callil, Bad Faith: A Forgotten History of Family and Fatherland , 2006
Diana Holmes, French Women’s Writing, 1849-1994 , 1996
Arthur Marwick, War and Social Change in the Twentieth Century: A Comparative Study of Britain,
France, Germany, Russia and the United States , 1974
Michael Scriven and Peter Wagstaff, eds., War and Society in Twentieth-Century France , 1991
Bertram M. Gordon, Collaborationism in France during the Second World War , 1980
Frederick J. Harris, Encounters with Darkness: French and German Writers on World War Two ,
1983
Philip Thody, Jean-Paul Sartre, a Literary and Political Study , 1960

Günter Grass and German Literature of WW2 : further reading a) Other fiction
(1 st date given is of publication in German; 2 nd date is of translation into English)
Heinrich Böll, Absent Without Leave and other stories , 1950/1967
.. .. And Where Were You, Adam?
, 1951/1955
.. .. Billiards at Half-Past Nine , 1959/1961
Günter Grass, Cat and Mouse , 1961/1963
Uwe Johnson, Speculations About Jacob , 1959/1963
Siegfried Lenz, The Survivor , 1963/1965
.. .. The German Lesson , 1968/1971
Thomas Mann, Doctor Faustus , 1947/1948
Bernard Schlink, The Reader , 1998 b) Literary and cultural history
Hannah Arendt, The Origin of Totalitarianism , 1951
Peter Demetz, Postwar German Literature (1970)
.. .. After the Fires: Recent Writing in the Germanies, Austria, and Switzerland (1986)
Michael Hamburger, After the Second Flood: Essays on Postwar German Literature (1986)
Frederick J. Harris, Encounters with Darkness: French and German Writers on World War Two ,
1983
Judith Ryan, The Uncompleted Past: Postwar German Novels and the Third Reich (1983)
Ernestine Schlant and J. Thomas Rimer, eds., Legacies and Ambiguities: Postwar Fiction and
Culture in West Germany and Japan (1991)
Peter Sichrovsky, Born Guilty: The Children of Nazi Families, 1987 c) on / by Grass
Peter O. Arnds, Represe ntation, subversion and eugenics in Günter Grass’s 'The Tin Drum' , 2004
Antoinette Delaney, Metaphors in Gunter Grass’ ‘Die Blechtrommel’ , 2004
Günter Grass, My Century , 1999
Ronald Hayman, Günter Grass (1985)

Ann Mason, The Skeptical Muse: A Study of Günter Grass's Conception of the Artist (1974)
Julian Preece, Günter Grass, His Life and Work , 2000
John Reddick, The ‘Danzig Trilogy' of Günter Grass: a study of 'The Tin Drum', 'Cat and Mouse' and 'Dog Years' (1975)

The Holocaust : Further reading
History:
Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem , 1963, revised edn. 1977
- - Origins of Totalitarianism , 1972
Geoffrey H. Hartman, ed., Bitburg in Moral and Political Perspective , 1986 - especially Theodor
W.Adorno, ‘What does coming to terms with the past mean?’ (pp 115-29)
Peter G. Pulzer, The Rise of Political Antisemitism , 1964
Rober S. Wistrich, Antisemitism, the Longest Hatred, 1991
Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory , 1982
Fiction and Memoirs:
(Other than books on the main reading-list)
Tadeusz Borowski, This Way for the Gas Ladies and Gentlemen , 1967 (Polish 1959)
Jerzy Kosinski, The Painted Bird
Jorge Semprun, The Long Voyage , 1963, Eng. transl. 1964
-- What A Beautiful Sunday!
, (‘Quel Beau Dimanche!’, 1980, Eng. transl. 1982
Art Spiegelman, Maus: A Survivor's Tale , 1973
-- Maus II: And Here My Troubles Began , 1986
George Steiner, The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H.
, 1982
Binjamin Wilkomirski, Fragments: Memories [sic] of a Wartime Childhood , 1995.
Literary criticism:
Al Alvarez, ‘Literature of the Holocaust’, Commentary , 1964; repr. in All This Fiddle: Essays,
1995-1967 (1968)
Robert Boyers, Atrocity and Amnesia: The Political Novel Since 1945 , 1985, ch. 8, ‘Political
Holocaust Fiction’
Geoffrey Hartman, ed., Holocaust Remembrance: The Shapes of Memory , 1994
Raul Hilberg, ‘I Was Not There’, in Berel Lang (ed.), Writing and the Holocaust (1988)
Tony Kushner, The Holocaust and the Liberal Imagination , 1994

Lawrence L. Langer, The Holocaust and the Literary Imagination , 1975
Ernestine Schlant, The Language of Silence: West German Literature and the Holocaust , 1999
Sue Vice, Holocaust Fiction , 2000
Primo Levi:
Carole Angier, The Double Bond: Primo Levi – A Biography , 2002
Jay Losely, ‘From savage elements: Epiphany in Primo Levi’s holocaust writings’, Journal of
European Studies , March, 1994, 1-21
Risa Sodi, A Dante of Our Time: Primo Levi and Auschwitz , 1990
- - ‘An Interview with Primo Levi’, Partisan Review , Summer 1987
Rupert Thomson, Primo Levi , 2002

Italy and Natalia Ginzburg : Further reading
Other novels about wartime Italy:
Giorgio Bassani, The Garden of the Finzi-Contini (1962, tr. 1974)
Giuseppe Berto, The Sky is Red (1948)
Italo Calvino, The Path to the Nest of Spiders (1947, tr. 1956)
Carlo Levi, Christ Stopped at Eboli (1947)
Elsa Morante, History: A Novel (tr 1978)
Alberto Moravia, Woman of Rome (1947, tr. 1949), Two Women ( La Ciociara , 1957)
Cesare Pavese, The Moon and the Bonfire (1950, tr. 1952)
Criticism:
Alan Bullock, Natalia Ginzburg, Human Relationships in a Changing World (1991)
Sergio Pacifici, A Guide to Contemporary Italian Literature from Futurism to Neorealism , 1962
Historical background:
Victoria de Grazia, How Fascism Ruled Women: Italy, 1922-1945 (1992)
Eric Linklater, The Campaign in Italy (1977)
Denis Mack Smith, Mussolini (1981)
Alexander Stille, Benevolence and Betrayal: Five Italian Jewish Families Under Fascism (1992)
Elizabeth Wiskemann, Fascism in Italy, its development and its influence (1970)

Japan : Further reading
Fiction: a) Anthologies
Howard Hibbett, ed., Contemporary Japanese Literature: An Anthology of Fiction, Film, and Other
Writing Since 1945 , 1977
Donald Keene, Modern Japanese Literature , 1960
Noriko Mizuta Lippitt and Kyoko Iriye Selden, eds., Stories by Contemporary Japanese Women
Writers , 1982
Shoichi Saeki, ed., The Shadow of Sunrise: Selected Stories of Japan , 1966 b) Single works:
David Guterson, Snow Falling on Cedars , 1994
Kazuo Ishiguro, An Artist of the Floating World , 1986
Yoshida Mitsuru, Requiem for Battleship Yamato ( Senkan Yamato no saigo , 1952), tr. 1985
Kenzaburo Oe, The Shadow of Sunrise , 1966
- A Personal Matter ( Kojin-teki na taiken , 1964), tr. 1969
Ooka Shohei, Fires on the Plain ( Furyoki , 1952), tr. 1969
Yasuoka Shotaro, A View by the Sea ( Kaihen no kokei , 1959), tr. 1984
Criticism:
Louis Allen, "Japanese Literature of the War and Postwar Years", Japan Foundation Newsletter
9, no. 4 (1981), pp 7-10
Donald Keene, Dawn to the West: Japanese Literature of the Modern Era , 2 vols., 1984
J. Thomas Rimer, Modern Japanese Fiction and its Traditions , 1979
Relevant chapters in: Ernestine Schlant and J. Thomas Rimer, eds., Legacies and Ambiguities:
Postwar Fiction and Culture in West Germany and Japan , 1991

History:
Richard Bosworth, Explaining Hiroshima and Auschwitz: History Writing and the Second World
War, 1945-1990 , 1993
Haruko Taya Cook and Theodore F. Cook, Japan at War: An oral history , 1992
John Hersey, Hiroshima , 1986
Christopher Thorne, Allies of a Kind: The United States, Britain and the war against Japan, 1941-
45 , 1978
Kazuko Tsurumi, Social Change and the Individual: Japan before and after defeat in World War II ,
1970
Spain
History / Biography:
Antony Beevor, The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939 , 2006
Ian Gibson, Federico García Lorca , 1987
Paul Preston, Franco: A Biography , 1993
Fiction / Autobiography:
Arturo Barea, The Forging of a Rebel , 3 vols., 1941-46.
Camilo José Cela, San Camilo, 1936 ( Vísperas, festividad y octava de San Camilo el año 1936 ,
1969), tr. John H.R.Polt, 1991.
Javier Cercas, Soldiers of Salamis ( Soldados de Salamina , 2001), tr. Anne McLean, 2003
Jorge Semprún, The Long Voyage (or The Cattle Truck ) ( Le Grand Voyage , 1963), tr. Richard
Seaver, 1964
Film:
Canciones para despues de una guerra , dir. Patino, 1971
Caudillo , dir. Patino, 1973
El corazon del bosque , dir. G utiérrez Aragón, 1978
La hora de los valientes , dir. Mercero, 1998
La vaquilla , dir. García-Berlanga, 1984

Literary criticism:
Frederick R. Benson, Writers in Arms: the literary impact of the Spanish Civil War , 1967
Ofelia Ferrán, ‘”Cuanto más escribo, más me queda por decir”: Memory, Trauma and Writing in the work of Jorge Semprún’, Modern Language Notes , 116, no. 2, March 2001, 266-294.
Stephen M. Hart, ‘ No pasarán’: Art, Literature and the Spanish Civil War , 1988
Ursula Tidd, The Infinity of T estimony and Dying in Jorge Semprun’s Holocaust
Autothanatographies ,. 2005
JT 29.10.07