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A rediscovered - and controversial - classic of war literature

About the Author

Gabriel Chevallier was best known for his satirical novel, Clochemerle, which was first published in 1934, subsequently translated into twenty-six languages, and went on to sell several million copies. Born in Lyon, Chevallier was called up at the start of the First World War and wounded a year later. He later returned to the front where he served as an infantryman until the war's end. He was awarded the Croix de Guerre and Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur. La Peur (Fear), which was first published in 1930, draws upon his own experiences and forms a damning indictment of the war. Chevallier died in 1969.

Reviews

Gabriel Chevallier, best known for his magnificent novel Clochemerle, has used his experiences during World War I to produce a work of great intensity, comparable to such great literary masterpieces of the period as Henri Barbusse's Under Fire
*Daily Mail*

There are enough flashes of intense colour and incident to make this translation a worthwhile exercise
*Sunday Telegraph*

Chevallier's pen is as sharp as a bayonet in exposing the arrogance and stupidity of commanding officers ... The power of the novel is increased by deft variations of pace ... There are eloquent soliloquies on nationalism and individual liberty, and impassioned arguments on the nature of war and its effects on those who wage it, by the only men truly qualified to speak of them ... Fear is being billed as a French All Quiet on the Western Front, and in this fine translation by Malcolm Imrie it is a fair claim
*Herald*

One of the most affective indictments of war ever written
*Bookself*

The most beautiful book ever written on the tragic events that blood-stained Europe for nearly five years ... a classic
*Le Libertaire*

All the horrors of war are there, but atrocity alone would not be enough to explain the grandeur of this text. It is the healthy defiance and controlled anger which earned the book its stripes
*Le Figaro*

It is the fear of the condemned man that is described here: fear that sometimes paralyses and sometimes excites by separating strength from courage. These pages which would have had the author shot during the war, we read them with amazement brought on by their complete honesty
*Le Soir*

What Chevallier wanted to write with Fear is a straightforward, honest book, from which all artifice is absent; a work that gives the reader the exact measure of war. Chevallier has had the courage to strip war of all its prestige by admitting: I was frightened
*Liberté*

A bravura work, fearless from start to finish, pitiless in its targets, passionate in its empathy
*TLS*

Visceral, brutal
*TLS*