November 1942:
An Intimate History of the Turning Point of the Second World War
by Peter Englund Bodley Head, 496 pages, £25
The Swedish historian Peter Englund made his name internationally in 2011 with The Beauty and the Sorrow, a stunning study of the First World War.
Now he has done the same with the Second World War, in a book that is likely to be similarly acclaimed. What makes Englund’s work original and remarkable is his narrative technique, which could be called ‘the mosaic method’. He builds up a complete picture of conflict by presenting eyewitness accounts from a large cast of characters experiencing the war across the globe in widely differing roles during the month – November 1942 – that Englund sees as the crucial turning point of the war.