Winner of thePrix Goncourt A New York TimesNotable Book of the Year The setting may be the rainy lower Loire Valley of the 1950s, butit is the WW I battlefields of Artois, Meuse, Lorraine, and Yser that form theemotional backdrop to this poignant testament to the vitality of life thatdeath cannot dim. Fields of Glory beginsas a collection of utterly charming reminiscences of the eccentricities offamily elders told by an unnamed and indeterminately aged narrator. In pure andgraceful prose, Rouaud describes crotchety grandfather Burgaud with his equallydifficult car, a cramped and leaky CV2, and maiden great-aunt Marie with hercard file of saints-"A prefatory catalogue of terrifying symptoms refersthe reader to the saint specializing in the corresponding disorder. The work ofa lifetime." It is in the midst of this comedy of daily life that themelancholy subtext of three generations slowly emerges: the stories of the twoyoung men who were casualties of the Fields of Glory and the family thatremains to remember them.