Henri Troyat: War, war, war! Oh, why?

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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts

French writers on war and peace

Henri Troyat: Selections on war

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Henri Troyat
From Strangers on Earth
Translated by Anthony Hinton

“All my life I’ll be a foreigner, a Frenchman in Russia, a Russian in France. It’s a sad thought.”

“No, it’s not. It’s a wonderful thing to have two countries. You’ll understand that better in a few years. If we all had two fatherlands war would be impossible.”

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As the taxi turned into the Rue Oudinot, Tania realized that she might be seeing her son for the last time. Her face quivered, as if someone had just struck her. “War, war, war!” she sighed. “Oh, why?…”

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“You’ve seen a lot of suffering, haven’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Your brother tells me you were a nurse at the front during the war. Was that when you learned to love men for their weakness, their wounds?”

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