'Only the villages are asleep, the eternal reservoir of all kinds of soldiery, the inexhaustible source of physical strength' At the beginning of the twentieth century the villagers of the Carpathian mountains lead a simple life, much as they have always done. The modern world has yet to reach the inhabitants of this isolated and remote region of the Habsburg Empire. Among them is Piotr, a bandy-legged peasant, who wants nothing more from life than an official railway cap, a cottage with a mouse-trap and cheese, and a bride ...
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'Only the villages are asleep, the eternal reservoir of all kinds of soldiery, the inexhaustible source of physical strength' At the beginning of the twentieth century the villagers of the Carpathian mountains lead a simple life, much as they have always done. The modern world has yet to reach the inhabitants of this isolated and remote region of the Habsburg Empire. Among them is Piotr, a bandy-legged peasant, who wants nothing more from life than an official railway cap, a cottage with a mouse-trap and cheese, and a bride with a dowry. But then the First World War comes to the mountains, and Piotr is drafted into the army. All the weight of imperial authority is used to mould him into an unthinking fighting machine, so that the bewildered peasant can be forced to fight a war he does not understand, for interests other than his own. The Salt of the Earth is a classic war novel, a powerful pacifist tale about the consequences of war on ordinary men.
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Add this copy of The Salt of the Earth to cart. $29.73, new condition, Sold by Kennys.ie rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Galway, IRELAND, published 2020 by Pushkin Press.
Add this copy of Salt of the Earth to cart. $30.80, new condition, Sold by Ebooksweb rated 3.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Bensalem, PA, UNITED STATES, published 2018 by Pushkin Press.
Add this copy of Salt of the Earth, the to cart. $39.74, new condition, Sold by Revaluation Books rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Exeter, DEVON, UNITED KINGDOM, published 2021 by Pushkin Press.
Clearly intended to be part of a larger work, this is the first volume of an account of a fictional soldier in the Austro-Hungarian army in World War 1. Basically the full volume only takes us to his swearing in during basic training. While the author does draw some interesting characters, and has some good turns of phrases (at least in the translation from Polish), one basically is left with an incomplete work.
