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One of the most powerful accounts of trench warfare from the WWI era, Under Fire recounts the experiences of the men of the French Sixth Battalion on the front lines after the German invasion. Compiled from diaries he had written on the front from 1914-1915, and completed in the hospital while recovering from injuries, Barbusse published his work in both serial and novel forms in late 1916. By the end of the war it was a world-wide bestseller, having sold over a quarter of a million copies. The narrative received mixed reviews at first because of Barbusse's gritty and brutal realism, which some war critics saw as validation for their protests, while others felt it fictionalized and exaggerated the war. Since then, Under Fire has been ranked with such classics as A Farewell to Arms and All Quiet on the Western Front as one of the most powerful, realistic portrayals of the horrors of war.

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9781463565619

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Henri Barbusse (1873-1935) was a French novelist and a member of the French Communist Party. Barbusse first came to fame with the publication of his novel Le Feu (translated as Under Fire) in 1916, which was based on his experiences during World War I. By this time, Barbusse had become a pacifist, and his writing demonstrated his growing hatred of militarism. Le Feu drew criticism at the time for its harsh naturalism, but won the Prix Goncourt. In January, 1918 he left France and moved to the city of Moscow, Russia where he married a Russian woman and joined the Bolshevik Party. The novel Clarte is about an office worker who, while serving in the army, begins to realize that the imperialist war is a crime. The Russian Revolution had significant influence on the life and work of Barbusse. An associate of Romain Rolland and editor of Clarte, he attempted to define a proletarian literature, akin to Proletkult and Socialist realism. Barbusse was the author of a 1936 biography of Joseph Stalin, titled Staline: Un monde nouveau vu a travers un homme (Stalin. A New World Seen Through the Man). Barbusse subsequently led a violent press campaign against his former friend Panait Istrati - a Romanian writer who had expressed criticism of the Soviet state. Barbusse in turn was harshly criticized for his admiration of Stalin and his propagandistic activities on behalf of Soviet Russia by his former comrade Victor Serge, who noted that Barbusse had dedicated a book to Leon Trotsky before Stalin had definitively won the power struggle against Trotsky, only to denounce Trotsky as a traitor after the latter's fall from power. Serge called Barbusse a hypocrite who was determined to be on the winning side. Barbusse was an Esperantist, and was honorary president of the first congress of the Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda. In 1921, he wrote an article for Esperanto journal, Esperantista Laboristo. ( Esperantist worker ) While writing a second biography of Stalin in Moscow, Barbusse fell ill with pneumonia, and died on August 30, 1935. He is buried in Le Pere Lachaise Cemetery, Paris. His grave has been vandalized in recent years, with many people mistaking his tombstone for Oscar Wilde's. In the foreword to I saw it Happen, a 1942 collection of eye-witness accounts of the war, Lewis Gannet wrote: (...) We shall be hearing and reading of this war for decades to come. No one of us can yet guess who will be its Tolstoys, its Barbusses, its Remarques and its Hemingways.

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