The Salt of the Earth

By Jozef Wittlin
Translated by Patrick John Corness

"One of the small number of contemporary works which extend into the sphere of the mythical and epical" -Thomas Mann

"One of the great Central European war stories, on a par with the works of Jaroslav Hašek." –Los Angeles Review of Books

The classic pacifist novel by a major Polish writer, who was nominated for the Nobel Prize

At the beginning of the twentieth century the villagers of the Carpathian mountains lead a simple life, much as they have always done. Among them is Piotr, a bandy-legged peasant, who wants nothing more from life than an official railway cap, a cottage, and a bride with a dowry.

But then the First World War reaches 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, 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 and a powerfully pacifist tale about the consequences of war for ordinary men.

Paperback
352 pages
Pushkin Press, 2021
5.09 x 0.89 x 7.79 inches
ISBN 9781782274728
War novel, Fiction