"The first comprehensive study of how the outbreak of the Second World War shaped the literary work of American, English, and European writers during the first years of the war, before its outcome was known, this book shows how the imminence and outbreak of the Second World War ignited the imaginations of writers ranging from Ernest Hemingway, W.H. Auden, and James Joyce to Bertolt Brecht, Evelyn Waugh, Henry Green, and Iráene Nâemirovsky"--