Rate this book

The Burning Of The World: A Memoir Of 1914 (2014)

by Béla Zombory-Moldován(Favorite Author)

3.85 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

1590178092 (ISBN13: 9781590178096)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

NYRB Classics

review 1: Poignant and full of beautiful, wistful memories, somewhere in between a war memoir and a testament to an age gone by. The Austro-Hungarian frontier has received scant attention within the Anglo speaking collective memory on World War I. It's amazingly foreign to see the pettiness of language politics taking precedence on the terrorizing front, petty concerns overlapping the sheer horror of war. Highly recommended.
review 2: If you are looking for a war memoir per se, this is not it - the author Zombory - Moldovan spent only a few days at the Galician front (not even at the front proper) before he was wounded and invalided out of combat. Instead, Zombory - Moldovan provides a highly detailed view of Hungarian society, their habits and attitudes (spoken and uns... morepoken), just before and during the start of World War I, and, with a painter's eye, describes the physical surroundings of the country and the towns - a world that most people seemed to know would be swept away forever, even though they would never admit it. Most of all, he honestly accounts for his own hopes and fears about combat and the future, feelings which, for the most part, he can disclose to no one. This short account (about 120 pp.) was apparently part of a larger memoir about the author's life, so there is not much narrative structure, but it is valuable as a portrait of a time when many still thought the war would be over in months, a portrait that is sensitive and sympathetic, if perhaps too conventional in the author's outlook (qualities one imagines the author's artwork shares). less

Download links for: The Burning of the World: A Memoir of 1914

Advertising