A World on Edge: The End of the Great War and the Dawn of a New Age

Author: Daniel Schönpflug

ISBN: 9781509818518

Price: Rs. 570.00 • ✓ 100% Genuine Publisher Edition

Book Overview

'Moving and inspired book ... An evocative and deeply affecting requiem for what might have been.' - Douglas Smith, author of Rasputin and Former PeopleA World on Edge reveals Europe in 1918, left in ruins by World War I. But with the end of hostilities, a radical new start seems not only possible, but essential, even unavoidable. Unorthodox ideas light up the age like the comets that have recently passed overhead: new politics, new societies, new art and culture, new thinking. The struggle to determine the future has begun.The sculptor Käthe Kollwitz, whose son died in the war, was translating sorrow and loss into art. Ho Chi Minh was working as a dishwasher in Paris and dreaming of liberating Vietnam, his homeland. Captain Harry S. Truman was running a men’s haberdashery in Kansas City, hardly expecting that he was about to go bankrupt – and later become president of the United States. Professor Moina Michael was about to invent the 'remembrance poppy', a symbol of sacrifice that will stand for generations to come. Meanwhile Virginia Woolf had just published her first book and was questioning whether that sacrifice was worth it, while the artist George Grosz was so revolted by the violence on the streets of Berlin that he decides everything is meaningless. For rulers and revolutionaries, a world of power and privilege was dying – while for others, a dream of overthrowing democracy was being born.With novelistic virtuosity, historian Daniel Schönpflug describes this watershed year as it was experienced on the ground – open ended, unfathomable, its outcome unclear. Told from the vantage points of people, famous and ordinary, good and evil, who lived through the turmoil and combining a multitude of acutely observed details, Schönpflug composes a brilliantly conceived panorama of a world suspended between enthusiasm and disappointment, and of a moment in which the window of opportunity was suddenly open, only to quickly close shut once again.

Edition details: English, 320 pages. Reference ISBN: 9781509818518.

About the Author

Daniel Schönpflug is an acclaimed author whose published works are celebrated internationally for their insight, narrative skill, and enduring reader appeal.

Why Readers Pick This Edition

• You’ll love A Bend in the River for its quiet power and haunting honesty. As you follow Salim’s life in a newly independent African nation, you’re drawn into questions of identity, belonging, and survival in a changing world. Naipaul’s prose is calm yet piercing, making you reflect long after you’ve turned the last page. This is a novel that rewards slow reading, deep thought, and readers who enjoy literature that explores politics, culture, and the human condition with unflinching clarity.
• Published by Pan Books / Pan Macmillan.
• Language: English.
• Page count: 320.

Catalog Description

'Moving and inspired book ... An evocative and deeply affecting requiem for what might have been.' - Douglas Smith, author of Rasputin and Former PeopleA World on Edge reveals Europe in 1918, left in ruins by World War I. But with the end of hostilities, a radical new start seems not only possible, but essential, even unavoidable. Unorthodox ideas light up the age like the comets that have recently passed overhead: new politics, new societies, new art and culture, new thinking. The struggle to determine the future has begun.The sculptor Käthe Kollwitz, whose son died in the war, was translating sorrow and loss into art. Ho Chi Minh was working as a dishwasher in Paris and dreaming of...

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