Status
Available
Call number
Series
Genres
Collection
Publication
Little Brown & Co (T) (1979), Edition: Reissue, Hardcover
Description
By 1941, after serving in North Africa and Crete, Guy Crouchback has lost his Halberdier idealism. A desk job in London gives him the chance of reconciliation with his former wife. Then, in Yugoslavia, as a liaison officer with the partisans, Crouch becomes finally and fully aware of the futility of a war he once saw in terms of honor."Unconditional Surrender" is the third novel in Waugh's brilliant Sword of Honor trilogy recording the tumultuous wartime adventures of Guy Crouchback ("the finest work of fiction in English to emerge from World War II" -"Atlantic Monthly"), which also comprises "Men at Arms "and" Officers and Gentlemen."
Media reviews
Our time's first satirist is Evelyn Waugh. For thirty years his savagery and wit have given pleasure and alarm. His mixed dish is celebrated: the Bright Young People of the Twenties, the popular press, Africa's political pretensions, death in Hollywood. . .all set down in a prose so chaste that at
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times one longs for a violation of syntax to suggest that its creator is fallible, or at least part American. Though the bright cold line never falters, Waugh is not a comic genius in Huxley's sense. His characters are taken from life, sometimes still struggling as he pins them to the page. He makes no new worlds. He simply turns this one inside out. He tends to look to the past for what was good rather than to the future for what might be. He is a reactionary. Show Less
User reviews
LibraryThing member edella
Guy Crouchback has lost his Halberdier idealism. A desk job in London gives him the chance of reconciliation with his former wife. Then, in Yugoslavia, as a liaison officer with the partisans, he finally becomes aware of the futility of a war he once saw in terms of honour.
LibraryThing member rocketjk
This is the third entry in Waugh's "Sword of Honour" series about life on the English home front and in the English army during World War Two. The narrative gets darker as the war progresses, and the protagonist, Guy Crouchback, sees the noble and honourable reasons for the war, and his own
The theme of the whole trilogy, perhaps, is summed up toward the end (this will not be a plot spoiler) when Guy, posted to Yugoslavia to act as liaison between the British army and the local Communist partisans, has a conversation with Jewish woman who is a defacto leader of the local Jewish community that, having as much to fear from the partisans as they had had from the Nazis, has been petitioning the British government for asylum or at least transport to Italy. The woman asks Guy:
"Is there any place that is free from evil? It is too simple to say that only the Nazis wanted war. These Communists wanted it too. It was the only way in which they could come to power. Many of my people wanted it, to be revenged on the Germans, to hasten the creation of the national state. It seems to me there was a will to war, a death wish, everywhere. Even good men thought their private honour would be satisfied by war. They could assert their manhood by killing and being killed. They would accept hardships in recompense for having been selfish and lazy. Danger justified privilege. I knew Italians--not very many--who felt this. Were there none in England?"
The first book of the series was the easiest to read; this third book is the best of the series and certainly the most thought-provoking.
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participation in it, evaporate into cynicism and distrust. In the meantime, as the buzz bombs begin to fall over London, those muddling through the war years at home live in ever-increasing discomfort about the degree to which their world will have forever changed, and all that's been lost to them.The theme of the whole trilogy, perhaps, is summed up toward the end (this will not be a plot spoiler) when Guy, posted to Yugoslavia to act as liaison between the British army and the local Communist partisans, has a conversation with Jewish woman who is a defacto leader of the local Jewish community that, having as much to fear from the partisans as they had had from the Nazis, has been petitioning the British government for asylum or at least transport to Italy. The woman asks Guy:
"Is there any place that is free from evil? It is too simple to say that only the Nazis wanted war. These Communists wanted it too. It was the only way in which they could come to power. Many of my people wanted it, to be revenged on the Germans, to hasten the creation of the national state. It seems to me there was a will to war, a death wish, everywhere. Even good men thought their private honour would be satisfied by war. They could assert their manhood by killing and being killed. They would accept hardships in recompense for having been selfish and lazy. Danger justified privilege. I knew Italians--not very many--who felt this. Were there none in England?"
The first book of the series was the easiest to read; this third book is the best of the series and certainly the most thought-provoking.
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LibraryThing member RonWelton
Returning from Alexandria, Guy Crouchback finds himself adrift, between postings or in transit or tucked away in some meaningless billet. He is not aware, though we are, that an obscure office of military intelligence has tainted his reputation because he has inadvertently and innocently been in
I think the title Unconditional Surrender refers to Crouchback who near the end of the novel comes to a point when he announces a fervent wish for death. Waugh wraps up the plot in an Epilogue, kills off Virginia and gives Crouchback a "happy" wife and children, satisfying some of his readers, no doubt, but not this one.
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proximity of enemy agents, an Italian restauranter/spy, a mad Scottish pamphleteer and, in Alexandrea, a faux priest/spy. He is denied assignment to Italy where his language talents would be most useful and is sent to the Balkans. Crouchback is also adrift internally, he doubts his moral compass, as do we. When he dismisses out of hand the deplorable plight of a large group of Jewish displaced persons, it appears he has lost even his decency. Then in an attempt to make amends he tries to befriend one of the Jews, Mme. Kanyi. That does not turn out well. The partisans, seeing her contact with the British, execute her and her family. In an act of selflessness, he re-marries Virginia who is broke and bears a child to the scoundrel, Trimmer. I think the title Unconditional Surrender refers to Crouchback who near the end of the novel comes to a point when he announces a fervent wish for death. Waugh wraps up the plot in an Epilogue, kills off Virginia and gives Crouchback a "happy" wife and children, satisfying some of his readers, no doubt, but not this one.
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Language
Original publication date
1961
Physical description
8.1 inches
ISBN
0316926213 / 9780316926218
Local notes
lr
series: #03 sword
series: #03 sword