War and Turpentine

"War and Turpentine is the astonishing result of Hertmans' reckoning with his grandfather's diaries. It is a book that lies at the crossroads of novel, biography, autobiography and history... It seems aching to be called 'Sebaldian', and earns the epithet glowingly... In McKay's lyrical translation, every detail has the heightened luminosity of poetry... War and Turpentine has all the marking of a future classic." -- Neel Mukherjee Guardian "Masterpiece, an accolade often casually bestowed, really does describe this magnificent book... A haunting blend of fact and fiction... Page after page holds you rapt with admiration for both Hertmans' writing and his hero." -- Peter Kemp Sunday Times, Book of the Year "Hertmans writes with an eloquence reminiscent of W.G. Sebald... a masterly book about memory, art, love and war." New York Times 10 Best Books of 2016 "A lovingly reimagined life of an ordinary man whose life was for ever marked by the First World War. Fine prose." The Economist, Book of the Year "Wonderful, full of astonishingly vivid moments of powerful imagery... Hertmans's book is something else again: it has a quietly resonant personal epic quality that dwarfs all around it." -- David Mills Sunday Times

Stefan Hertmans (Author) Stefan Hertmans is the prizewinning author of many literary works, including poetry, novels, essays, plays, short stories and a handbook on the history of art. He has taught at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent, at the Sorbonne, and at the Universities of Vienna and Berlin. His first novel to be translated into English, War and Turpentine, was longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize, and was chosen as a book of the year in The Times, Sunday Times, and The Economist, and as one of the ten best books of the year in the New York Times.