The Burning of the World: A Memoir of 1914 [Paperback]

Publishing during the 100th Anniversary of the First World War
 
An NYRB Classics Original
 
The budding young Hungarian artist Béla Zombory-Moldován was on holiday when the First World War broke out in July 1914. Called up by the army, he soon found himself hundreds of miles away, advancing on Russian lines and facing relentless rifle and artillery fire. Badly wounded, he returned to normal life, which now struck him as unspeakably strange. He had witnessed, he realized, the end of a way of life, of a whole world.

Published here for the first time in any language, this extraordinary reminiscence is a powerful addition to the literature of the war that defined the shape of the twentieth century.“The literary discovery of the year.” —Eileen Battersby, Books of 2014

“A remarkable narrative, a real treasure, a book everyone should read.The Burning of the Worldis a work of superb reportage as well as being a non-fiction companion volume to Joseph Roth’s classicThe Radetzky March…The Burning of the Worldis a marvellous discovery with a humility and sense of wonder that places it more than the equal of even Robert Graves’sGood-Bye to All That.” —The Irish Times

“[W]ritten with a painter’s eye for colour … [it] matters not only for its literary qualities but also as an evocation of the Austro-Russian theatre (for which we have very few accounts) during the more mobile opening phase of campaigning, when casualty rates were among the highest of the war. … [a] story not only of madness and massacre but also of regeneration.” —David Stevenson,The Financial Times

 “To a certain extent, World War I memoirs written from the ant’s perspective resemble one another, all mud and horror. What makes this one stand out is the author’s painterly eye for dl³Y