One True Book Club: Under Fire, Part 2

Join us for the second of three installments of One True Book Club ’26! In this series of episodes, we are reading the Hemingway-relevant selection, Under Fire by Henri Barbusse, the classic French WWI novel published in 1916.

This episode covers chapters 10-19 of the novel. We discuss how Barbusse finds moments of unexpected humanity amidst the carnage of warfare and his subtle characterization of the platoon, including the narrator himself. We also cover his  metafictional “Swear Words” chapter, where Barbusse reflects on a Realist writer attempts to describe the indescribable.

We also connect this brutal novel to Hemingway’s writing, to other modernist works, to Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried… and even to The Shawshank Redemption. 

We are using the Penguin Classics edition with an Introduction written by future One True Podcast guest, Professor Jay Winter.