The Winter Soldier

By (author) Mason Daniel
Short description/annotation
The stunning third novel from the bestselling author of The Piano Tuner. As the First World War devastates Europe, The Winter Soldier is the story of one man thrust, utterly unprepared, into a remote medical outpost in the Carpathian mountains, and the woman that is set to save him.
Description

Shortlisted for the 2020 Joyce Carol Oates Prize

''Part mystery, part war story, part romance, The Winter Soldier is a dream of a novel'' - Anthony Doerr, author of All The Light We Cannot See.

From the bestselling author of The Piano Tuner, comes Daniel Mason''s The Winter Soldier, a story of love and medicine through the devastation of the First World War.

Vienna, 1914. Lucius is a twenty-two-year-old medical student when World War I explodes across Europe. Enraptured by romantic tales of battlefield surgery, he enlists, only to find himself posted to a remote field-hospital ravaged by typhus. Supplies have all but run out, the other doctors have fled, and only a single nurse remains, from whom he must learn a brutal, makeshift medicine.

Then one day, an unconscious soldier is brought in from the snow, his uniform stuffed with strange drawings. He seems beyond rescue, until Lucius makes a fateful decision that will change the course of his life.

From the gilded ballrooms of Imperial Vienna to the frozen forests of the Eastern Front, The Winter Soldier is the story of finding love in the sweeping tides of history, and of the mistakes we make and the precious opportunities to atone.

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Part mystery, part war story, part romance, The Winter Soldier is a dream of a novel — impeccably researched and totally immersive
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One of the finest prose stylists in American fiction
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Utterly convincing and written with a lyricism that belies the horrors it so unflinchingly describes
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Held me by the throat from the first lyrical page to the last
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A powerful tale
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Extraordinary
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A tour-de-force. I was immersed in the grandeur of Imperial Vienna and the frozen battlefields of the Eastern Front
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One of the best books I''ve ever read
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So real, so rich and detailed, that the room in which I was reading vanished
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Captivating . . . A novel to get lost in
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A powerful tale of a medical student in the First World War
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A touching, intensely human story of longing and love
Biographical note
Daniel Mason is a physician and author of the novels The Piano Tuner, A Far Country, and The Winter Soldier. His work has been translated into twenty-eight languages, and adapted for opera and theatre. A recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, he is currently a Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Stanford University, where he teaches courses in the humanities and medicine. He lives in the Bay Area with his family.
Promotional headline
From the bestselling author of The Piano Tuner, comes Daniel Mason''s The Winter Soldier, a story of love and medicine through the devastation of the First World War.