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Lists with This Book. How many times has the story recounted in this classic novel about war been writ in the history of mankind? Ask our soldiers to find a way to save the nation and they do, only to be blamed for their actions in the end. The thing about violence is that it destroys the actor and the acted-upon. There is no safe place. Penguin Classics has just reissued this title with a Foreword by Robert D.
Kaplan, revised from a article in The Atlantic called "Rereading Vietnam. We learn what makes up their natures just as they do, undergoing the hardships, failed escape attempts, sickness, and final release back to France. We chart their crisscrossing and overlapping lives as they try to put themselves back together on home soil and lament with them the changes to their character that forbid surrender to their old pleasures. Called once again to perform in Algiers, the men reassemble and rely upon one another to build an unusual type of flattened, anti-hierarchical and discrete fighting structure that relies on adopting the guerrilla tactics of the enemy.
Knowing each other so intimately allows each to play to their strengths, but every man is damaged in the course of their work. Their very integration into a society rebelling French rule gives them access to information but also requires recognizing the humanity of those they strive to overcome. Later, their tactics are deniable by higher ups in the French military, leaving the soldiers to bear the brunt of saving Algiers' Kasbah.
And they must feel also the loss of the constraints of discipline and danger. A friend has remarked that a "key weakness [in the novel] is its understanding of women. Men absorbed as they are in war and with fellow officers often do not see women as the whole people they undoubtedly are. Many times the reverse is also true.
Men who return from war are something apart. Neither side can comprehend the other: Their primary loyalty is with other men, whom they see with exceptional clarity and sympathy. It is easy to see why this book is the classic it has become. It has a vivid relevance and feel even now. Immediately it was hailed as a classic, a true example of the immediacy of classic status when a book carries with it such honesty and a sense of history in the making.
There was a film produced in , released in , called 'The Battle of Algiers'. It is a harrowing and almost unbearably lifelike reenactment of the scene when the paratroopers described in this book arrive in Algiers. The docudrama won awards in Venice, London, and Alcapulco immediately on release and even today is described as electrifying and eerily resonant. There was palpable excitement in the NYTimes review of the premier of the film at the opening of the New York Film Festival at the Philharmonic in the fall of I loved the French-ness of the book, which did not at all distract from the universality of its message.
Engaging and psychologically tense depiction of French soldiers, centurions, from the prison camps after Dien Bien Phu to the guerrilla wars of Algeria. One reason this book is so interesting is because of its attention from the contemporary American military because of the similarity of the struggles - Vietnam still looms large, of course, but also the bonds between combat troops, the separation of a warrior culture from civilians, and the long grinding struggle of military occupation, which to Engaging and psychologically tense depiction of French soldiers, centurions, from the prison camps after Dien Bien Phu to the guerrilla wars of Algeria.
One reason this book is so interesting is because of its attention from the contemporary American military because of the similarity of the struggles - Vietnam still looms large, of course, but also the bonds between combat troops, the separation of a warrior culture from civilians, and the long grinding struggle of military occupation, which to them demands exemptions from the law.
In 24 and the legal opinions of the late Antonin Scalia, torture is used immediately and without regret, but here the centurion agonizes over it for most of the day and the act of torture is a psychological break, which he hates himself for - today it's now more of a political tool, a means of revenge. I'll limit my review to a few comments because I don't want to spoil the story itself. And if you don't want to know anything , stop here. Focused on a small group of French paratroopers, the tale unfolds in three acts: Much about the book is artificial, in the way of high drama.
The characters speak brilliantly, in fine beautifully composed sentences. It is suffused with the warrior's creed, an ethos that often has more in common with its counterpart on the enemy side than with the Christian culture it defends but which does not defend them in turn. All of this made excellent reading. Its key weakness, for me, is its understanding of women — and that's all I'll say about that. A book like this casts a spell.
Readers like David Petraeus or Robert Kaplan who provides the introduction to this edition are riveted by the insurgent soldier-saint aspect, the "band of brothers. I'd like France to have two armies: That's the army in which I should like to fight. Here are resonant echoes of European literature going all the way back to The Song of Roland and the Crusades, if not to the Iliad — and little of the light mockery that appears as early as Orlando Furioso and Don Quixote a hundred years later or the black comedy of antiwar literature in the 20th century.
The men of The Centurions are as noble and isolated as their Roman precursors. In this respect the novel is a romance. There is also a quite different characterization of these men placed in the mouth of a French journalist, which the reader is free to accept or discard. Albert Camus and the Quest for Meaning. Camus was trapped in the same moral dilemma as these soldiers in fact, one of the Algerian "terrorists" quotes Camus to her captor , the chasm which divides the soldier not from a corrupt society but from its fundamental values.
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In the night thoughts of one of the more appealing paratroopers: He knew it had to come to this, that this was the ghastly law of the new type of war. But he had to get accustomed to it, to harden himself and shed all those deeply ingrained, out-of-date notions which make for the greatness of Western man but at the same time prevent him from protecting himself.
View all 5 comments. Mar 04, Sigrid Weidenweber rated it it was amazing. I do not recommend books very often. Having read all my life I am difficult to please. As an author, I am also a harsh critic, however this book demands that it is recommended to readers. The writing, its style, the content and psychological explanations of character are excellent. This description of the French war in Indochina deserves to be read in all college history classes, as does the account of the war in Algeria.
A complex and cerebral book. It can be viewed as a thinly disguised polemic on counterinsurgency, an anti-communist screed, or the wine of sour grapes by an Imperialist bitterly lamenting the loss of his possessions. Lots and lots of sex. Larteguy voices several times over the moral superiority of France, as evinced in how its men allow the women of A complex and cerebral book.
Larteguy voices several times over the moral superiority of France, as evinced in how its men allow the women of their colonial possessions to be sexually liberated, compared to their oppressive countrymen. All the while, continuing to sexually objectify them. Apparently the freedoms inherent in Sexual Egalitarianism do not include Feminism Larteguy skewers civilians in France, and the Pied-Noirs in Algeria. He skewers intellectuals and the bloated cowards in the military that are not of the paratrooper community. However, it is fascinating. The first third of the book takes place in a prison camp after the fall of Dien Bien Phu.
In this portion, a collection of officers attempt to resist the indoctrination of their Vietnminh jailers. Each of the officers learns a different lesson from this experience, and the alpha officer, Raspeguy, later uses communist methods to indoctrinate conscripts assigned to fight with him in Algeria. The second portion of the book sees many of these officers return to France, and the intellectual, ideological and emotional battles they fight with the people they'd left behind.
This portion speaks to the alienation of the returning combatant and their disconnect with an indifferent, and often scornful nation. Our heroes grapple with the issue of torture, which further goes to develop their disconnect with their civilian masters, and even their own high military leadership. All in all, it was a powerful book. Lots of food for thought and an interesting document of that era. Americans would do well to read it, and see how other countries have conceptualized wars very similar to the ones we fight now.
If you're looking for a blood-and-guts, thrill-ride of an action novel, this isn't for you, While there is some kinetic combat very, very little in fact, most of the violence is implied , the majority of this book is a psychological battle of wills and ideology. The main characters of this novel are all inspired and based on real French military officers. The book, "A Savage War of Peace" by Alistair Horne provides strong background for them, and is also an excellent companion if you want a broad and concise overview of the entire conflict from its earliest origins to the bitter end.
Aussaresses wrote an account of his service entitled, "Battle of the Casbah". Nov 26, Brian rated it really liked it. This is a book about soldiers, but not so much about war. It's a treatise on class, race, communism and colonialism as told through the experience of French paratroopers in Indochina and Algeria. Female readers may object some because many the female characters are judged as lusty, unfaithful, or both while the same characteristics in the men is portrayed as simply understandable.
Editorial Reviews
While the book is a little disjointed in the telling, and the characters at times hard to sort out, it is worth read This is a book about soldiers, but not so much about war. While the book is a little disjointed in the telling, and the characters at times hard to sort out, it is worth reading because it is more about subject and character than violence.
It is a good look at a time in history that seems long ago and far away, but it is not. May 17, David rated it it was amazing. An excellent book which gives a good understanding of the French military mindset during the First Vietnam War. I recommend it to my students at Glasgow University as a 'must-read' for American History - Vietnam studies. I read this book as a young Parachute Regiment officer and have remembered its lessons to this day as they have been applicable to all subsequent wars.
Jan 27, Pat Dugan rated it it was amazing. I have this book in my library, and consider it a treasure. Sep 08, John rated it it was amazing.
Le centurion: leondumoulin.nl: Books
In both cases, France went there first and failed first, before the United States did. The intro to the Penguin edition of The Centurions lets us know that by now, you'll find copies of this superb novel on the desks of many prominent soldiers, including Generals David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal, who showed such competence whatever else happened to them later in their superintendence of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, respectively.
That struggle is doomed and the soldiers know it, whether they let themselves realize it or not. Larteguy is a reporter, soldier, and writer who knows his material, knows war, knows history, and cares about people and the meanings of their actions. We see some unforgettable characters -- Captain Philippe Esclavier, brilliant, world-weary, and first to see that this is a new kind of war, spearheaded by a new brand of nationalist fervor expressed in guerrilla and terror tactics; Colonel Raspeguy, a Basque soldier with a flair for heroism; Major de Glatigny, an upper-class soldier with higher thoughts and lower drives; and many more.
All suffer as prisoners of war in Vietnam after the fall of Diem Bien Phu. When they return to France, they suffer the ennui of the demobbed soldier. So they sign up again, this time for Algeria. There, they learn that to succeed, they must think and act as their opponents do, as guerrillas willing to do anything to further the cause. It is a worldly, knowing, propulsive book, one of the best-selling novels of its time in the French-speaking world, and remade into a couple of films. For a war novel, it devotes less space to the violence and savagery of war than to discussion of their meaning -- and yet, perhaps because of this, when savagery does erupt, it seems all the more savage.
Near the end, there is an especially splendid account of a showdown with a rebel force, told with equal parts thrill and cold-blooded detachment. All of them are coming unwillingly to realize that the world is changing, war is changing, and France, too, the France they have loved and fought for, is changing, shrinking, losing its grip on the far-off lands it once controlled.
They all become increasingly impatient with the hidebound, old-fashioned ideas of the men who command them, and all go off campus, go against orders, to achieve something lasting if they can. A word about the title. The centurions referred to are those of Rome, who were dispatched to distant corners of the known world in the name of Rome More and more, the centurion, abandoned by the country he has served, must not hope for thanks, but must fight for his own ideals, and if those fail, then for victory, for his mates on the battlefield, and if not those, then himself.
There's not much place for women or love in The Centurions , although I count two true loves, one of a woman unreturned, and fatal for the soldier she is caring for, and another of a man surprised for a rich woman whose Algerian farm is burned down by rebels. Our French centurions end this book huddled on a far-off hillside in the cold and rain; they have only one another. It's a tremendous trilogy -- you could read The Mercenaries first, then this one, then the final one, The Pretorians. They follow several of these figures from their beginnings as soldiers for France, some in the Foreign Legion, all the way to their several destinies.
What if you win the battle and lose the war? What if you win the war and lose yourself? What if you always beat the enemy but in the end lose the French Empire?
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If we had read their warnings, we might never have gone. So this is the book that got Frenchmen reading again? A notorious read, if there ever was one.
Well known for being on the short list of David Petraeus' favorite books, as well as providing literary justification for torture, rape and murder by military forces in order to combat against the western world's new enemies. In broad strokes, the story surrounds the educational process a group of French officers undergo while held prisoner by communists in Vietnam.
There they learn that conve So this is the book that got Frenchmen reading again? There they learn that conventional warfare is insufficient for dealing with the new, superior soldier who has jettisoned emotions, traditions and moral conventions. Once released, these officers take what they have learned and practice their newly learned lessons in Algeria. Through disregard of civilian rights, application of merciless torture, and the occasional rape which transforms victim into lover, these French officers save the day, prevent a series of terrorist bombings, and dismantle an entire nationalist network.
This book is known for its message that the successful armies of the future will have to conduct battles through surgical strikes, using ideology when available, but always emphasizing focused ruthlessness in achieving the goal of victory. Peace is given little thought in this work as being false or repugnant. Good dialogue seems to suffer the same fate.
I do not know if this is a translation issue; too much of the characters sentences are either wooden or outright improbable. A French officer discussing his "loins" with another male is comically surreal. Much is made of alliances and divisions. The Centurions see themselves as beyond the parade ground armies of the past. They see themselves as disconnected from the politics, the people, and even the morals of their country. All are viewed in an adversarial light. Yet part of the lessons learned by the Centurions in Vietnam is the importance of co-opting the general populace as efficiently as possible.
Civilians are to be controlled or disposed of. This philosophy is hardly mitigated by the duplicity which the French government inflicts time and time again against the Centurion, first in Vietnam, then in Egypt, and finally in Algiers. The Centurions have more in common with their terrorist counterparts than the average citizen they're supposed to protect.
As they have adopted their tactics, it's hardly surprising that strategy would follow. This is not high literature. The book expresses viewpoints which must have intrigued some in the 50s when it was written, but when read today such viewpoints can only be seen as inherently pathological. Penguin is soon to release the sequel to this work, The Praetorians.
In that work I believe the officers of this novel are brought back to France to be tried for crimes committed while combating the Algerian terrorist group. These officers attempt to overthrow De Gaulle's regime in response. There is much to think about in this novel; the problem is that most of it is extremely unsettling. Larteguy was something of an embedded journalist in his time and the reader feels a degree of authenticity through portions of the story.
Unfortunately, Larteguy dealt with very difficult and nasty problems, though one would have to say if his "solutions" do eliminate the difficult they certainly enhance all that is nasty. The former is necessarily tied to a time and place in history, the latter appears to be timeless. The former coincides with the demise of European attempts to colonize the entire world and the latter are the instruments caught up in it all. Their success depends on a logic of efficiency. Their struggle, first depicted in Vietnam, carries over to Algeria.
Communism in Asia is thus depicted as a close sibling to the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. The struggle is the same. All of this is very specifically twentieth century history. On the other side we have the soldiers. These soldiers in particular emerge out of the final evaporating whiffs of French aristocracy. They are the very opposite of the communists and Islamic fundamentalists they fight.
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They are radically unequal in the eyes of Property or Allah. And these particular soldiers, as the name of the book strongly implies and specific events in the book make explicit, are atavisms of a kind of man that emerged from the aristocracy from which the French aristocracy was born, the Roman aristocracy. If Centurions are timeless, are the foes they face timeless as well? Inscr This is Jean Larteguy's most famous book that garnered international acclaim and sold millions of copies.
Inscribed on the column from years before was "Titus Caius Germanicus, centurion of the Xth Legion" and underneath it from a more recent time, "Friedrich Germanicus, of the 1st R. The Vietnamese victors march their French prisoners into communist re-education camps. During their time in captivity, the French paratroop officers who survive the ordeal to be repatriated, bond together and try to utilize communist "revolutionary war" tactics in order to win their next war in Algeria.
The book ends with the French centurions fighting the Battle of Algiers with propaganda, torture, terror and any tactic in order to win so that the last remnants of their empire could survive. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Les Centurions , please sign up.
The Centurions
Lists with This Book. This book is not yet featured on Listopia. Smith rated it did not like it Dec 25, Plastic Chair rated it did not like it Aug 21, Osterman rated it did not like it Mar 05, There are no discussion topics on this book yet. He remained there for nine months and spent time in a Francoist jail before joining the Free French Forces as an officer in the 1st Commando Group 1er groupe de commandos.
He remained on active duty for seven years until becoming a captain in the reserves in order to enter the field of journalism. In Latin America, he reported on various revolutions and insurgencies, and in encountered Che Guevara shortly before his capture and execution. Some of the most emphasized topics in his writing are decolonization, nationalism, the expansion of Communism, the state of post-war French society, and the unglamorous nature of war.
Published in it portrays vividly the chaos of civil war in the Congo after the murder of Patrice Lumumba and the conflict between Moise Tshombe secessionist government and the United Nations Forces.