Elisa Segrave

Longing for oblivion: The Warm Hands of Ghosts, by Katherine Arden, reviewed

Arden’s novel spares us no details of trench warfare on the Western Front and the severely traumatised men dreaming of escape into amnesia

Canadian soldiers wounded in the Second Battle of Passchendaele. [Getty Images] 
issue 02 March 2024
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  • The Warm Hands of Ghosts

    Katherine Arden

    Century, pp. 381, £18

This novel, set towards the end of the first world war, is eerie and fanciful yet gruesomely down-to-earth. It features Laura Iven, formerly a nurse at the Front – awarded the Croix de Guerre in 1915 – and her brother Freddie, part of the Canadian Expeditionary Force sent to take Passchendaele Ridge in November 1917.

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