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Title:

The Middle Parts of Fortune

Written by:

Frederic Manning 

Published by:

Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd 

Published:

January 01 2010 

Read by:

Stanley McGeagh 

Number of CDs / Tapes:

8 

Duration:

10 hours 15 minutes 

MP3 size:

 

Genre:

Australian

 

Available Date:

January 28 2010 

ISBN:

9781742145716 

APN / ISBN-13:

9781742145716 

BAB:

091154 

"The finest and noblest book of men in war." - Ernest Hemingway

First published anonymously in 1929 because its language was considered far too frank for the public circulation, The Middle Parts of Fortune was hailed by T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, by Lawrence of Arabia and Ernest Hemingway, as an extraordinary novel. Its author was in fact Frederic Manning, an Australian writer who fought in the Battle of the Somme in 1916, and who told his story of men at war from the perspective of an ordinary soldier. Never before published in Australia, The Middle Parts of Fortune is now recognised as a twentieth-century classic.

Stanley McGeagh’s low-key, dispassionate narration may at first seem unsuited to a novel set on the horrific Western Front of WWI. But Manning’s novel is nothing if not matter-of-fact in its depiction of the lives of ordinary British infantry soldiers who are called upon to fight and die in the cause. Manning is concerned with the ordinariness of life even in the extraordinary situation of war. He details the drudgery, the camaraderie, the animosities, and the longings of soldiers, interspersed, of course, with moments of profound terror and dread. McGeah’s sober, measured reading gets across the notion that even when violence and destruction are the norms, the most mundane and fundamental aspects of living persist.
AudioFile Magazine [Nov 04]