Description - Unknown Soldiers by Väinö Linna
One of Finland's best-loved literary masterpieces, Väinö Linna's Unknown Soldiers follows a ramshackle troupe of machine-gunners in the Second World War, from mobilization in 1941 through Finland's defeat by the Soviet Union three years later. As these very different men, from across the country and all walks of life, argue, joke, swear, cadge a loaf of bread or a cigarette, and combat both boredom and horror in the swamps and pine forests, the war will make or break them. They are the unknown soldiers. Weaving together the wartime songs, propaganda and dialogue that characterized life on the front, Linna's novel distilled a historical moment into a searing fiction that was instantly recognized as truer than history. Upon its publication in 1954, the novel achieved, in the words of its dumbstruck publisher, 'greater success than any book in our country ever'. Gritty and unromantic in its depiction of battle, told with a documentary-like realism, Unknown Soldiers also honours the dogged determination of a country and the bonds of brotherhood forged between men at war, as they fight for their lives.
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