Books written in the TW2000 timeline

[James Langham]

I started thinking the other day about what books might be written about the Third World War - I came up with the following:

Famous literature of the war

Many novels have been written about the Third World War but the following are regarded as classics that have often been added to school reading lists or studied at universities. It is only a short sample of the works published, many more novels have been published but few have gained such status as these.

“In the Shadow of Death’s Cloud” Sean Goulding (US) – Anti-war novel of US soldiers in Europe by a draftee ex-serviceman of 1st Armoured first published in 2020. Deals with the fate of a platoon of Mech Infantry *through the war. This book is less studied than the others at a junior level but is often at least mentioned at university level as the author makes frequent allusions to classical and renaissance literature. Pre war he was a post-graduate student of literature in Boston and after the war has returned to the new university there as a professor.

-********* “Alpha through to Omega” Julio Ramirez (US) – a novel of US troops in Europe and the horrors they inflict during Operation Omega. It ends with the lead character turning in her rifle and wishing never to see it or use it again. This became a popular best-seller and forced the US to face up to what had occurred during the operation. It was first published in 2012 and has not been out of print since. It is often used as a school text. The author is believed to be writing a sequel entitled “The Return” about the character's life after the war haunted by her dreams.

-********* “Final Flight” Alison Holland (UK) – story of a B52 crew on a long mission to drop a nuclear weapon on an unknown target. As they head there mysterious voices on the radio turn out to be historical characters making the crew reflect on how history will see them and makes them confront their own natures. Voices include a young Adolph Hitler on the following of orders in the trenches, Trueman on the decision of using atomic weapons against the vast casualties expected in an invasion of Japan, a worker who died of radiation poisoning at Chernobyl after willingly staying exposed longer than was safe to stop more leaking and Robert Oppenheim on the possibility the atmosphere would have ignited in a chain reaction during the Manhatten Project. Written by the wife of a USAF pilot of a B52 who went missing on a raid over Poland in 1998.

-********* “ But it’s MY Turn!” Johan Schmidt (Hanover) – an illustrated children’s story of how two monsters can’t play together and eventually set fire to the board and break all the pieces. Ends with them ominously getting out a smaller game but with matches and fuel already to hand. Schmidt has gone on to become the mayor of Hannover and as a result the book has become popular with British families in the area who have brought the story back to the UK. It was one of the first books to deal with the war, especially for children when it was first published in 2006.

-********* “Private Zhukov’s War” The Unknown Soldier (really Boris Dosavich) (Soviet) – the war told in two parallel accounts. The first on the left page is a soldier’s diary. The second on the right page are the letters he writes to his mother, wife and unborn child. The novel ends with a letter addressed to all 3 from a friend telling how Piotr Zhukov dies in action followed by the soldier’s own diary carried on in Zhukov’s book giving the truth that Zhukov committed suicide. Popular in typescript format passed from friend to friend. Published in the West in 2033 to popular acclaim under the author’s real name. Many critics have praised it as the Third World War's answer to All Quiet on the Western Front from the First World War. Dosavich never lived to see the fame of his work spread, he died of lung cancer in 2011 caused from exposure to nuclear explosions during his service in the Red Army.


If anyone else can come up with a short synopsis I will see about integrating them into later versions.