Other editions of book The Good Soldier

Two couples, two marriages—both are seemingly perfect, both are falling apart. Beneath the surface gentility of American John Dowell with his wife Florence and the landed grace of Edward and Leonora lie fictions and deceit. There are secret desires, hidden power-games, suicides, and madness. Everyone is hiding something; even the narrator can’t be trusted. Brilliantly inventive, tragic, and ironic, The Good Soldier is one of the great novels of the twentieth century.

Igennem ni år har det amerikanske ægtepar John og Florence tilbragt deres somre på et mondænt kursted i den tyske by Nauheim. Det samme er tilfældet for det engelske par Edward og Leonora. Et venskab er spiret frem mellem ægteparrene i en verden styret af etikette og pli. Ren idyl, tilsyneladende, men krusninger begynder snart at vise sig på den ellers så verdslige overflade. Utroskab, løgn og forment lidenskab truer med at blotlægge en forfaldshistorie af dimensioner, der løber på tværs af de to ægtepar, og som er præget af alt andet end takt og tone.Den gode soldat er Ford Madox Fords psykologiske melodrama fra 1915, en subtil og satirisk afdækning af sindets skjulte mekanikker og kødets længsler. Den har opnået klassikerstatus og figurerer på flere anerkendte lister over verdens bedste bøger. Please note: This audiobook is in Danish.

The Good Soldier is narrated by the character John Dowell, half of one of the couples whose dissolving relationships form the subject of the novel. Dowell tells the stories of those dissolutions as well as the deaths of three characters and the madness of a fourth, in a rambling, non-chronological fashion that leaves gaps for the reader to fill. The "plot" is not then the real story; the reader is asked to consider whether they believe Dowell and what part he truly played in how this "saddest story ever told" actually plays out.

Here, for the first time as an unabridged audiobook, this enigmatic modern classic details the adulterous entanglements of two couples on seemingly normal, friendly terms. The truth of these liaisons emerges, retrospectively and in fragments, from the viewpoint of the innocent and unsuspecting John Dowell. Dowell's perpetual failure to grasp and understand the nature of the infidelities of the people around him makes this a compelling and intriguing first-person narrative. The gap between one person's interpretation of events and the reality is deftly illustrated in what has been critically acclaimed as a near perfect novel and one of the greatest English classics of the twentieth century. Kerry Shale's reading is superb, evoking all the suspense and the subtleties of this fine novel.

The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion is a 1915 book depicting the tragic accounts of Edward Ashburnham, the good soldier himself, and his own superficially wonderful marriage and that of two American pals. The story is told using moments of recurrences, a literary style that molded Ford's inventive insight of literary emphases. The story’s real title was The Saddest Story, but after the First World War, the issuers asked Ford to change the title. Ford sardonically proposed the title The Good Soldier, and the title was set to such. Ford Madox Ford born Ford Hermann Hueffer was an author, poet, critic and editor whose periodicals, The English Review and The Transatlantic Review, were influential in the progress of the first years of the 20th century English literature. Ford is commemorated today for his stories such as The Good Soldier, the Parade's End tetralogy and The Fifth Queen trilogy. The Good Soldier is often comprised in one of the finest literature of the 20th century, consisting the Modern Library 100 Best Novels, The Observer′s "100 Greatest Novels of All Time", and The Guardian′s "1000 novels everyone must read". Ford was born in Wimbledon to Catherine Madox Brown and Francis Hueffer, his brother was Oliver Madox Hueffer. Ford's father, a German, became a music critic for The Times, and his mother was British. His father’s grandfather Johann Hermann Hüffer was the earliest to release Westphalian poet and writer Annette von Droste-Hülshoff. Ford made use of the name of Ford Madox Hueffer, but then he changed it to Ford Madox Ford, presumably after the First World War because "Hueffer" is way very Germanic, in respect of his grandfather, the Pre-Raphaelite artist Ford Madox Brown, whose biography he had authored.

Handsome, wealthy, and a veteran of service in India, Captain Edward Ashburnham appears to be the ideal "good soldier" and the embodiment of English upper-class virtues. But for his creator, Ford Madox Ford, he also represents the corruption at society's core. Beneath Ashburnham's charming, polished exterior lurks a soul well-versed in the arts of deception, hypocrisy, and betrayal. Throughout the nine years of his friendship with an equally privileged American, John Dowell, Ashburnham has been having an affair with Dowell's wife, Florence. Unlike Dowell, Ashburnham's own wife, Leonora, is well aware of it. When The Good Soldier was first published in 1915, its pitiless portrait of an amoral society dedicated to its own pleasure and convinced of its own superiority outraged many readers. Stylistically daring, The Good Soldier is narrated, unreliably, by Dowell, through whom Ford provides a level of bitter irony. Dowell's disjointed, stumbling storytelling not only subverts linear temporality to satisfying effect, it also reflects his struggle to accept a world without honor, order, or permanence. Called the best French novel in the English language, The Good Soldier is both tragic and darkly comic, and it established Ford as an important contributor to the development of literary modernism.