Review: Anna Branach-Kallas and Piotr Sadkowski Comparing Grief in French, British and Canadian Great War Fiction (1977–2014) (Katarzyna Więckowska)

Comparing Grief in French, British and Canadian Great War Fiction (1977–2014) (2018) by Anna Branach-Kallas and Piotr Sadkowski attests to the widespread and continuing impact of the First World War, which it examines in a selection of British, French, English-Canadian, and French-Canadian novels written in the last forty years. Signifi cantly, in contrast to the prevailing analytical framework, Branach-Kallas and Sadkowski do not focus on literary representations of combat and front life, but on texts that depict the long-lasting aftermath of the war in order to investigate the psychological and social eff ects of the confl ict and to inquire into why the war refuses to be buried in the past. Comparing Grief explores the “changed reality” after the Great War and analyses the cultural trauma produced by the war in France, Canada, and Britain, focusing on shell-shock and the ensuing disintegration of individual identity and communal bonds.