The Unknown Soldier - Väinö Linna

[Amanda]

Just read for my randomiser, and gave it 4 stars. The story follows members of a Finnish machine gun company fighting the Soviet Union at their border from 1941-1944 (when the Moscow armistice was signed).

Inspired by Linna's own experience during this conflict, the prose is very realistic and stripped back, without artifice. It definitely reminded me of 'All Quiet on the Western Front" in that regard. The varying members of the unit are all distinct enough in veiwpoint, background, and personality that they feel like real people, and it is affecting when most of them die in tragedy.

[Gail]

The Unknown Soldier by Väinö Linna is a Finnish classic and it has been said that it is not translatable because of the use of Finnish dialect's and idioms to convey the background and personality of the characters. However, although I am sure a great deal was lost in this translation into English I felt that I was understanding much of what the author was bringing to his characters. I do not have a good background in Finnish history and I did have to research some of the background of the "Continuation War", the war fought against the Soviet Union to attempt to regain land lost in the "Winter War", both of which were side theaters of World War II.
I am not a lover of books about war but I have now read a great many books about World War I in particular because of the 1001 list. As Amanda mentions above, Unknown Soldiers has a quality reminiscent of All Quiet on the Western Front. It manages to be a novel about real historical events that unsentimentally shines a light on the day to day rather heroic lives of the soldiers while making clear the waste and stupidity of war itself.
At the beginning of the book we are introduced to a well regarded Captain who has some personal ambitions but is also realistic in regards the nature of military discipline and what really motivates a soldier. Once we are thoroughly introduced to this character he is killed. Right there we are told not to like any of the characters too much and not to expect anything but tragedy. And yet, the unfolding of the war, the maturing of raw recruits into soldiers, the fact that we see the war at the same level that the soldiers do, without context or any foreshadowing, meant I was living through what the characters were living through and it was quite an effective approach. It is probably one of my favorite war books and in that it managed to show some laughter and delight at the antics of some of the soldiers while keeping the tension and some real moments of war drama. I really wanted the men to make it out alive. Silly me....