Fortunes of War: The Balkan Trilogy

The Fortunes of War is a teeming, complex, and rich novel, alive with the uncertainty and adventure of civilian life during wartime. Olivia Manning has filled the pages of this epic work with vivid characters who, over the course of nearly a thousand pages, tell the larger story of Europe during the trauma of the Second World War. Harriet and Guy Pringle are young newlyweds when they arrive in Bucharest from England, eager to experience life in that cosmopolitan city. It is the autumn of 1939, only a few weeks after Germany’s invasion of Poland, and nobody thinks the war will go on for very long–though troop movements and treaties are the only topic of conversation. By the time the Pringles realize that they are in the middle of a worldwide conflict, it is too late to return home. The only thing to do is to join the great mass of displaced people–White Russians, journalists, attaches, and con artists–and move east to Athens. Manning’s mastery of the long form allows her to expand both outward and inward, tackling complexities of world politics and interpersonal relationships with equal panache.