Presenting the desperate conflict of the First World War through the eyes of an ordinary German soldier, Ernst Juenger's Storm of Steel is translated by Michael Hofmann in Penguin Modern Classics.
'As though walking through a deep dream, I saw steel helmets approaching through the craters. They seemed to sprout from the fire-harrowed soil like some iron harvest.'
A memoir of astonishing power, savagery and ashen lyricism, Storm of Steel depicts Ernst Juenger's experience of combat on the front line - leading raiding parties, defending trenches against murderous British incursions, and simply enduring as shells tore his comrades apart. One of the greatest books to emerge from the catastrophe of the First World War, it illuminates like no other book not only the horrors but also the fascination of a war that made men keep fighting for four long years.
Ernst Juenger (1895-1998) the son of a wealthy chemist, ran away from home to join the Foreign Legion. His father dragged him back, but he returned to military service when he joined the German army on the outbreak of the First World War. Storm of Steel (Stahlgewittern) was Juenger's first book, published in 1920. Greatly admired by the Nazis, Juenger remained at a distance from the regime, with books such as his allegorical work On the Marble Cliffs (1939) functioning as a covert criticism of Nazi ideology and methods.
If you enjoyed Storm of Steel, you might like Edward Blunden's Undertones of War, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.
'To read this extraordinary book is to gain a unique insight into the compelling nature of organized, industrialized violence'
Niall Ferguson, author of War of the World
'Hofmann's interpretation is superb'
The Times
'Unique in the literature of this or any other war is its brilliantly vivid conjuration of the immediacy and intensity of battle'
Telegraph
'Storm of Steel is what so many books claim to be but are not: a classic account of war'
Evening Standard
Rezensionen / Stimmen
Undoubtedly the most powerful memoir of any war I have ever read ... Storm of Steel combines the most astonishing literary gifts with absorption with war in every detail. It has German loyalties and a German sensibility, but not a trace of propaganda. It is particular, yet universal ... What Juenger saw and recorded was, to use his own word, 'primordial'. It takes great art to convey that appalling simplicity -- Charles Moore * Telegraph * Storm of Steel is what so many books claim to be but are not: a classic account of war * Evening Standard * Hofmann's interpretation is superb * The Times * Unique in the literature of this or any other war is its brilliantly vivid conjuration of the immediacy and intensity of battle * Telegraph *
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ISBN-13
978-0-14-190691-1 (9780141906911)
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Schweitzer Klassifikation
Ernst Junger (Author)
Ernst Juenger, the son of a wealthy chemist, ran away from home to join the Foreign Legion. His father dragged him back, but he returned to military service when he joined the German army on the outbreak of the First World War. Storm of Steel was Juenger's first book, published in 1920. Juenger died in 1998.
Michael Hofmann (Translator)
Michael Hofmann is a poet and translator from the German. For Penguin he has translated four books by Hans Fallada, in addition to works by Franz Kafka, Ernst Juenger, Irmgard Keun and Jakob Wassermann.
