Patrol

1943, the North African desert. Major Tim Sheldon, exhausted and battle weary, is tasked with carrying out a futile and unexpected patrol mission. Fred Majdalany’s intimate, tense novel puts this so-called minor action centre stage, as over the course of the day and through the night of the patrol itself, Sheldon reminisces about his time as a soldier, his own future, and what it means to confront fear.

Based on Fred Majdalany’s own wartime experience with the Lancashire Fusiliers in North Africa, this new edition of a 1953 classic includes a contextual introduction from IWM which sheds new light on the true events that so inspired its author.

‘If poetry was the supreme literary form of the First World War then, as if in riposte, in the Second World War, the English novel came of age. This wonderful series is an exemplary reminder of that fact’ WILLIAM BOYD

‘An absolute gem. The attention to detail, the rising tension and the utterly convincing characters… stunning’ JAMES HOLLAND

‘When a man has been a soldier and seen action, he writes of war with true understanding, and with authority. When that man writes with wit, elegance and imagination, as Fred Majdalany does in Patrol, he produces a military masterpiece’ ALAN MALLISON

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