Alice Winn

At Night All Blood Is Black

by David Diop, translated by Anna Moschovakis

“So the book is written in French, but the protagonist talks about how he can’t speak French. There’s an interesting passage where he talks about how translation is just a series of small lies that tell a big truth. So there’s a really weird, complex thing going on there with language, and that the translation of this French language book won the International Booker—it’s just all very meta.” — via Interview, April 2023

All Quiet on the Western Front

by Erich Maria Remarque

“It’s pretty horrible, I almost don’t like to recommend it, because you have to be prepared for it. It’s hard to talk about, because it’s too sad. My favourite part is where Paul goes on leave, he’s 18 and he returns home, and in his bedroom he looks at his shelf full of books and he finds himself completely unable to feel the quiet rapture he used to feel when he looked at his own bookshelf.” — via Interview, April 2023

Birdsong

A Novel of Love and War

by Sebastian Faulks

“Birdsong, I would almost say, is a quite straightforward depiction of war. It gets the job done. When I was trying to write a scene set at the Battle of the Somme, I remembered reading Birdsong when I was around twenty, and weeping at the hairdressers—which was quite uncomfortable, they were like: ‘Can you stop crying quite so much?’ So I looked back, re-read the Somme scene. And it was so perfectly written.” — via Interview, April 2023

A Farewell to Arms

by Ernest Hemingway

“I’ve recommended it because I think you have to. It’s considered one of the great classics. Personally, I have a love-hate relationship with Hemingway. I really admire him, he’s a very playful writer, I always enjoy him more than I expect to. But there is something so dudely bro-ish about him. I have to be in the right place for him.” — via Interview, April 2023

Regeneration

by Pat Barker

“Regeneration is a war book that’s not really set in the war. I seem to remember Pat Barker saying that writing from the perspective of this doctor, Dr Rivers, who had also never been to war felt like a very honest place to start from.” — via Interview, April 2023