Fiction set in July-August 1914

July 3, 2024 5:59 PM

For a period of time that has been written about as history so very much, the July Crisis, from the Sarajevo shootings to the outbreak of the First World War, seems oddly under-represented in fiction. Are there July Crisis novels, films?
posted by Fiasco da Gama to Writing & Language (12 answers total)

Would a play suffice? If so, there’s Archduke, about the lead up to the assassination.
posted by reren at 6:57 PM on July 3

Not quite a book laser-focused on this exact period, but I think you'd be interested in Joseph Roth's superb Radetzky March.
posted by kickingtheground at 7:22 PM on July 3

Aleksandar Hemon's The World and All That It Holds (first chapter)
Stephen-Paul Martin, The Ace of Lightning
posted by paper scissors sock at 8:55 PM on July 3

Vera Brittain wrote Testament of Youth originally as fiction [guardian]

action in All Quiet on the Western Front [g] primarily takes place later than that initial moment, but there is some earlier exploration, e.g.: People simply didn’t have the slightest idea of what was coming. As a matter of fact it was the poorest and simplest people who were the most sensible; they saw the war as a disaster right from the start, whereas those who were better off were overjoyed about it…
posted by HearHere at 4:38 AM on July 4

World’s End by Upton Sinclair
posted by staggernation at 5:24 AM on July 4

Not a novel, but a play: The Last Days of Mankind, by Karl Kraus. Covers the entire First World War, starting with the July crisis. Very comprehensive.

I also really loved Die Inkommensurablen by Raphaela Edelbauer, about three young people from different classes meeting for the first time and spending a wild night in Vienna together, waiting for the German ultimatum to expire. Sadly, I don't think there's an English translation. Maybe my favourite book I read last year.
posted by sohalt at 8:47 AM on July 4

NYRB Classics has several novels about that time period.
posted by perhapses at 8:57 AM on July 4

The early chapters of Rilla of Ingleside covers that period from a Canadian perspective. It's all in the background though. The book itself is WWI from the perspective of Anne Shirley's (of Green Gables fame) youngest daughter who is 15 when the war starts so she's not too much concerned with world events. I don't know if this is actually true but I once read that it was the only book about the Canadian home front written by a woman who lived through it.
posted by Constance Mirabella at 10:59 AM on July 4

Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time, esp. Time Regained, also:
The final volume of In Search of Lost Time chronicles the years of World War I, when, as M. de Charlus reflects on a moonlit walk, Paris threatens to become another Pompeii [city lights]
posted by HearHere at 11:17 AM on July 4

Betsy and the Great World is based on Maud Hart Lovelace's trip to Europe in summer 1914.
posted by brujita at 2:35 PM on July 4

I've been reading all the Pulitzer novel/fiction winners and, large event that it is, is at least referenced in a number of the early ones, but it actually shifts the plot in Ernest Poole's His Family and Willa Cather's One of Ours, though it takes place at a distance in both cases.
posted by jocelmeow at 2:59 PM on July 4

The 39 Steps is set during this period. It is a ripping yarn by an avowed Imperialist, but it's also a pretty well written spy thriller. It has been filmed/televised multiple times but none of the versions are faithful enough to the original and one of the things that usually gets dropped is the political and European angle.
posted by plonkee at 5:11 PM on July 4