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Description
“An eminently readable comedy of modern war” (New York Times), Men at Arms is the first novel in Evelyn Waugh’s brilliant Sword of Honor trilogy.
Guy Crouchback, determined to get into the war, takes a commission in the Royal Corps of Halberdiers. His spirits high, he sees all the trimmings but none of the action. And his first campaign, an abortive affair on the West African coastline, ends with an escapade that seriously blots his Halberdier copybook.
Men at Arms is the first 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 Officers and Gentlemen and Unconditional Surrender.
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Praise
"Highly entertaining."
—Atlantic Monthly
"An eminently readable comedy of modern war...frequently hilarious, sometimes touching."
—Alice Morris, New York Times
"Reading Men at Arms is like hearing a full keyboard used by a pianist who has hitherto confined himself to a single octave. Waugh is fully alive to the fact that no modern war is just a soldier's war. The drawing rooms, kitchens, and clubs of the home front interest him just as much as the barracks and the tents....To Waugh--and to the reader, after Waugh has waved his magic wand of characterization--mediocrity seems not only a human condition but a fascinating one."
—TIME
"A highly entertaining novel about some of the preposterious experiences of the Second World War....Men at Arms has none of the ponderous detail, none of the piled-on brutality, which have made so many war books a heavy burden. Waugh's sharp wit and sure touch of satire are always at work."
—Edward Weeks, Atlantic Monthly