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Alamein to Zem Zem: Keith Douglas

A classic war book by one of the finest poets of the Second World War.

Keith Douglas was posted to Palestine in 1941 with a cavalry regiment. When fighting broke out at El Alamein in 1942, he was instructed to stay behind as a staff officer. But he wanted to fight, and so, completely disobeying orders, he drove a truck to the site of the battle and participated as a tank commander.

Alamein to Zem Zem is a vivid and unforgettable description of his experiences on the desert battlefield, seen through the eyes of a poet-soldier.

'Highly charged, violent descriptive prose … conveys the humour, the pathos and the literal beauty of that dead world of tanks, sand, scrub and human corpses … Comparable in descriptive power and intelligence to the books of Remarque, Sassoon and Blunden which spoke in similar terms of 1914-1918.' Spectator More

Alamein to Zem Zem
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