The Queen's Reading Room

The Fortunes Of War

By Olivia Manning

Recommended By Susan Hill

2 trilogies, set in Romania and the Levant, during WW2. Nothing else I know makes us experience what war was like for those living through it as civilians not soldiers.
~ Susan Hill

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Publish Date: 1960-1980

The Fortunes of War includes Manning’s two trilogies, The Balkan Trilogy, composed of The Great Fortune (1960), The Spoilt City (1962), and Friends and Heroes (1965), and The Levant Trilogy, composed by The Danger Tree (1977), The Battle Lost and Won (1978), and The Sum of Things (1980). At the outbreak of the war, Harriet and Guy Pringle are forced to leave Romania and flee to Greece, then Palestine, and then Egypt. Inspired by Manning’s own experience during the war, the novels tell the story of a young married couple during WW2 and the surrounding group of English expatriates.

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