A Stricken Field: A Novel

Being a fan of Ernest Hemingway, I have tended to disbelieve Martha Gelhorn's oft repeated statement that she wasn't stalking the author, but just happen to run into Papa in a low end bar in Key West. She wasn't looking to advance her career as a writer by seducing the world famous novelist, oh no! Well, who knows, was she an innocent ingenue or a calculating bitch? Don't know for sure so I figured I owed her an honest evaluation of her fiction.It's a fine piece of writing. Written during the time Gelhorn and Hemingway's Cuban idyl it definitely shows his influence. It is chock a block with Hemingwayesq profundities: "But they seemed to her only pitifully, nakedly young, and strange because they were hunted and untamed like all very brave people." and "But disaster doesn't harm the really good ones: they carry their goodness through untouched and nothing that happens can make them cowardly or calculation."There is a really good chapter dealing with torture. It is relatively bloodless as it doesn't descend into vivid description, but rather explains the Nazi perspective on those less than Aryan. The heroine, Mary Douglas, is a war reporter with her lover waiting in Paris, is a thinly disguised version of Gelhorn herself. The scene is Prague 1938 after England and France have handed Hitler the Sudatenland, effectively partitioning Czechoslovakia. Her attempt to get the French and British to delay the repatriation of German socialists and others back to Germany mirrors her own efforts to help refugees..Gelhorn sets out to and effectively portrays the dilemma of refugees in Eastern Europe prior to WWII and by extension their plight everywhere. A good book to read while we consider the situation in Syria. There's some silliness, but there's also some damn good writing too.Richard W. Wise, author:  The French Blue

Martha Gellhorn’s 1940 novel is not a great book, but an important one. Her book can be viewed as a novelized version of her December 10, 1938 Collier’s Weekly article entitled “Obituary of a Democracy” which described life in post-Munich Prague. Gellhorn arrived in Prague just after covering the Spanish Civil War where she established her reputation as a war reporter and was Ernest Hemingway’s lover. She would become his third wife in 1940 and go on to become one of the great war reporters of the 20th Century.The novel’s protagonist is reporter Mary Douglas, Gellhorn’s alter ego if you will. She is there to cover the demoralization of Czechoslovakia after being sold out by England and France at Munich. As a result the Czechs surrendered the Sudetenland to Hitler. With that the Czech’s lost their defensible border with Germany and it became inevitable that the Germany would ultimately swallow up the heart of the country.Mary Douglas notes the demoralization of the Czech Army which was not defeated in battle as the soldiers return home. It is one thing to lose a war; it is another to surrender without a fight. With the German occupation of the Sudetenland, Prague is flooded with refugees who join other fleeing Hitler from Germany and Austria. Among the Germans are two communists, Peter and Rita who Douglas befriends. Little did they know that their resistance to Hitler would soon be sold out by Stalin. Those two organize safe houses for the refugees but with European borders closed they are trapped when the Czech government orders them all home. Rita and Peter then go on the run and Peter would soon face a horrific torture by Gestapo agents operating with seeming impunity in Prague. Democracy is dying.Gellhorn’s prose puts you in the place of the demoralized soldier, the struggling resistance and the hopeless refugee. In a way it is a lesson for our time.

I found this book most interesting because the author was a war correspondent so you're reading the story from a different perspective than an author telling a story.

"A stricken field" is the most emotionally devastating book I have ever read. It is also probably one of the most deeply personal novels ever written. The central figure in the book, Mary Douglas, the US journalist caught up in the turmoil following the Nazi dismemberment of Czechoslovakia and desparate to do something to help the thousands of doomed refugees is Martha Gellhorn. Everything Mary sees and feels, Martha saw and felt in Prague in 1938. You know as the reader that the characters in the novel were actual people and their sufferings and loss really happened. Writing this book as war loomed across Europe must have been gut wrenching for Gellhorn, but she never lost her courage and conviction in uncovering the real stories of anguished people on the wrong end of history. We all owe her a huge debt for her tenacious journalism then and now.

While technically a novel, this work provides an in depth look into the agony of those who were among the first victims of Nazi aggression.

I am a big Gellhorn fan, and it was nice to finally read "A Stricken Field." While she calls it a novel, it's quickly evident that it's autobiographical. The most interesting part is the Afterward in which she talks about her actual experiences in Prague. As one of the only female journalists in a male dominated profession, she was a remarkable woman. If you're interested in Martha, it's a great read. As a novel, it's a bit of a slog.

Gelhorn gives you a view of Prague in 1938 after the Munich accord gave Germany power with the backing of England and France to dissolve the most industrial county in Europe. The unfolding events of NAZI take over and terror are witnessed through the eyes of Mary Douglas a journalist from America observing and two Germany communist Rita and Peter who fled prisons in Germany only to be under a order to vacate Prague in 24 hours. Gelhorn lets you feel the tension and terror of the people caught in a beautify city and country just before the outbreak of world war !!.