The Silence of Compliance: Child Soldier Trauma Narratives in Contemporary African War Novels

The victimhood of child soldiers is without any argument, a fact. In many wars, the illegitimate conscription of children under the age of eighteen has resulted in severe repercussions in the mental health of the child soldiers even after the war. Child soldier trauma depicted through many literary artifacts shows the intensity and gravity of the situation. The novels by Uzodinma Iweala, Chris Abani, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie viz Beasts of No Nation, Song for Night and Half of a Yellow Sun address the issue of child soldier conscription, the resultant trauma, and the slim chances of the betterment of the children even after the war is over. The paper moves toward acknowledging the victimhood of these children but at the same raising concerns about the agency of the trauma. The role of the child soldiers as perpetrators beyond their status of being victims and the necessity to provide proper psychosocio care to avert trauma and impending disorder in the society. A new approach concerning the grey area of in-betweenness in the victim/victimiser binary is needed while analysing desperate times like that of the Biafran civil war.

A Persistent Force: Violence in Maurice Gee’s Historical Novels for Children

<p>Since the publication of his first novel, The Big Season, in 1962, Maurice Gee’s fiction for adults has been noted for its preoccupation with violence. But can we say the same of his fiction for children? And if so, how might that predisposition be reconciled for young readers? Using a predominantly literary-historical reading of Gee’s fiction for children published between 1986 and 1999, this thesis attempts to answer these questions. Chapter 1 establishes the impact of violence on Gee’s early years and its likely influence on his writing. Chapters 2-4 then consider the presence of violence in Gee’s five historical novels for children. Chapter 2 focuses on the wartime novels, The Fire-Raiser and The Champion, and their respective depictions of war and racism, while chapter 3 explores individual, family and social violence as “expanding scenes of violence” (Heim 25) in The Fat Man. The fourth and final chapter discusses the two post-war novels, Orchard Street and Hostel Girl, where social violence runs as an undercurrent of everyday life. The thesis finds that violence – in different forms and at different intensities – persists across the novels and that Gee tempers its presence appropriately for his young readers. Violence, Gee seems to be saying, is part of the mixed nature of the human condition and this knowledge should not be denied children.</p>

A Persistent Force: Violence in Maurice Gee’s Historical Novels for Children

<p>Since the publication of his first novel, The Big Season, in 1962, Maurice Gee’s fiction for adults has been noted for its preoccupation with violence. But can we say the same of his fiction for children? And if so, how might that predisposition be reconciled for young readers? Using a predominantly literary-historical reading of Gee’s fiction for children published between 1986 and 1999, this thesis attempts to answer these questions. Chapter 1 establishes the impact of violence on Gee’s early years and its likely influence on his writing. Chapters 2-4 then consider the presence of violence in Gee’s five historical novels for children. Chapter 2 focuses on the wartime novels, The Fire-Raiser and The Champion, and their respective depictions of war and racism, while chapter 3 explores individual, family and social violence as “expanding scenes of violence” (Heim 25) in The Fat Man. The fourth and final chapter discusses the two post-war novels, Orchard Street and Hostel Girl, where social violence runs as an undercurrent of everyday life. The thesis finds that violence – in different forms and at different intensities – persists across the novels and that Gee tempers its presence appropriately for his young readers. Violence, Gee seems to be saying, is part of the mixed nature of the human condition and this knowledge should not be denied children.</p>

War and the subaltern: Voice as power in Buchi Emecheta’s Destination Biafra

In Africa, as in most other parts of the world, whenever there is war (or massive violence of any other hue), the common people are used as cannon fodder to protect the powerful upper class formulators of the letters of the war. Women and children are easily the most vulnerable. They are raped, tortured, murdered, starved, widowed, and exposed to all sorts of insecurity and depredation. In the end they are marginally characterized in upper class, male-centered war discourse. In this research, we locate the voice of the subaltern in Buchi Emecheta’s civil war novel, Destination Biafra (1982). We utilize Subaltern Studies in a qualitative approach to offer the needed agency to female subalterns as well as a few other marginalized groups. We map the trajectory of these voices and show that the subaltern woman and the other margins denounce colonial complicity in the androcentric war, and would rather the society eschewed violence as conflict resolution strategy. With this study we fill an existing gulf in the Nigerian Civil War narrative and create an alternative discourse against the largely upper class, male-centered voices that have hitherto characterized civil war novels.

Evelyn Waugh’s War Novels in Francoist Spain

Evelyn Waugh’s experiences as captain in the Second World War represented the raw material for several novels, such as Put out More Flags (1942), Men at Arms (1952) and Brideshead Revisited (1945). These novels depict, on the one hand, the experiences of once immature bright young people who are now confronting the war reality, and, on the other, they satirize the military bureaucracy and portray the nostalgia for the conservative age of Catholic English nobility, which disappeared during the war. It could be assumed that these three novels might have been well received in Franco’s Spain as the Catholic theme as well as Waugh’s right-wing conservative beliefs could have influenced the censors’ approval or disapproval. Thus, the present paper will analyse the reception in Spain of Put out More Flags, Men at Arms and Brideshead Revisited considering the reports enclosed in the censorship files guarded at AGA (General Archive of the Administration) in Alcalá de Henares, Madrid. These documents reveal that Waugh’s novels were not easily approved by the Spanish censors during the Francoist dictatorship.

”Hinner vi inte ta en grogg tillsammans, innan ångaren sjunker?”

”How about a drink together, before the ship sinks?” Fact and Fiction in Erik Pallin’s Kaparkaptenen på Emden The First World War gave rise to a surge of war novels, many of which were aimed at a young audience. These novels can be characterized as adventure stories with boys as their main target group. Swedish author Erik Pallin’s Kaparkaptenen på Emden: Romantiserad skildring från det stora världskriget 1914 (The Privateer Captain of Emden: Romanticized Depiction from the Great World War in 1914) was published in December 1914. It is not only one of the first Swedish youth novels about the war, but also one of the most intriguing as the tension between reality and fiction is particularly strong in Pallin’s novel. It tells the story of the German cruiser Emden whose raids in the Indian Ocean attracted much attention from journalists and authors. The article investigates how Pallin depicted the war for his young readers, focusing on the relationship between fact and fiction. The analysis shows that Pallin, much like the journalists reporting on Emden, transforms Emden’s warfare into heroic adventure tales and portrays Emden’s captain as a charismatic hero who symbolizes the male ideal of the time. The analysis concludes that Kaparkaptenen på Emden to some extent can be considered a “newsreel novel” (Paris), but that Pallin also romanticizes Emden’s warfare to appeal to his young readers. Rather than depicting the atrocities of real-life war, Pallin presents the war as an adventure with idyllic, romantic, and comical elements. The novel’s happy ending, with the war coming to an end, suggests that Pallin wished to take a stance against the war, but it can also be read as a strategy used to appeal to his young audience by offering them a story of hope.

Bucheinbände und Rezeption der Antikriegsromane von Alexander Moritz Frey und Adrienne Thomas

Die autobiographisch unterlegten Antikriegsromane von Alexander Moritz Frey (1881–1957) Die Pflasterkästen. Ein Feldsanitätsroman (1929) und Adrienne Thomas Die Katrin wird Soldat. Ein Roman aus Elsass-Lothringen (1930) literarisieren den Erfahrungsraum des Sanitätsdienstes und der Kriegskrankenpflege; sie kamen in der Weimarer Republik fast gleichzeitig mit Erich Maria Remarques Bestseller Im Westen nichts Neues auf den Buchmarkt – und mussten diesem dank ihrer Qualität zunächst nicht weichen. Ihre Schutzumschläge und Bucheinbände, oft von renommierten Graphiker*innen geschaffen, kommentieren die in ihnen enthaltene Erzählung und sie illustrieren das Vergessen und Erinnern der Werke, die sie umschlossen. Les deux romans pacifistes à caractère autobiographique, celui d’Alexander Moritz Frey (1881–1957), Die Pflasterkästen. Ein Feldsanitätsroman, de 1929 (Les caisses de pansements. Un roman de service de santé militaire en campagne) et celui d’Adrienne Thomas (1887–1980), Die Katrin wird Soldat. Ein Roman aus Elsass-Lothringen, de 1930 (Catherine soldat, 1933 pour la traduction française), analysent par le moyen de l’écriture l’expérience du service médical de campagne et des soins de santé en temps de guerre ; ils sont sortis sur le marché du livre pendant la République de Weimar, presque en même temps que le best-seller À l’Ouest rien de nouveau d’Erich Maria Remarque – auquel, grâce à leur qualité, ils n’ont pas eu dans un premier temps à céder le pas. Les diverses jaquettes et couvertures de ces ouvrages, souvent créées par des graphistes de renom, exposent le récit consigné et illustrent l’oubli et la renaissance qu’ont connus les œuvres qu’ils contiennent. Two autobiographically inspired anti-war novels, Die Pflasterkästen. Ein Feldsanitätsroman (1929, tr. as The Cross Bearers, 1930) by Alexander Moritz Frey (1881–1957) and Die Katrin wird Soldat. Ein Roman aus Elsass-Lothringen (1930, tr. by Margaret L. Goldsmith as Catherine Joins Up / Katrin Becomes a Soldier, London / Boston, 1931) by Adrienne Thomas make literary capital out of the experiences of wartime medicine and nursing. Published in the Weimar Republic soon after Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, they were good enough to hold their own against this bestseller for a time. Their dust jackets and covers, often created by prestigious designers, illustrated the oblivion and memory of the works within and commented on the stories they contained.

Patrick MacGill: Traducción al español de una selección de sus poemas y semblanza crítica

During the First World War, Patrick MacGill served with the London Irish Rifles, although once in the conflict, he worked as a stretcher-bearer. On the battlefield, he wrote his war novels and his book of poetry, Soldier Songs, where the poems “The Cross”, “I Will Go Back” and “The Trench” are included. In this article, the reader will find the first translation into Spanish of these three poems and a critical profile, overviewing MacGill´s life from his birth in Glenties to his death in the United States and analyzing how all his literary production is related to his own experiences and certain decisions taken, which will influence both his successes and failures.

Retreating to the Country: R.C. Sherriff's Rural Interwar Novels & Environmental Politics

This essay contextualizes two of R.C. Sherriff's inter-war novels, Greengates (1936) and The Hopkins Manuscript (1939), within modernist debates about countryside preservation as well as noting their ongoing relevance to contemporary environmental politics. By creating characters who are both sympathetic war veterans and easily satirized figures of patriarchy and privilege, Sherriff engages complex themes of capitalist consumerism, ‘us’ and ‘them’ attitudes about land policy, and fraught impulses of pastoral nostalgia. These novels resist facile diatribe; instead, they force the reader to inhabit the emotional swings inherent in the lived experience of love and sacrifice required for environmental preservation.