The latest addition to my website is Claude Simon‘s L’Acacia (The Acacia). This is a book about war. In twelve chapters, the book jumps backwards and forwards between World War I and World War II (with a chapter to set the scene before World War I and one set in the immediate aftermath of World War I) telling the story of Simon’s father in World War I, who did not survive, and Simon himself in World War II (he did survive). We learn of the chaos surrounding the fall of France in May 1940 as well as of the wholesale slaughter of World War I. Simon gives us superbly well-written detailed descriptions of the events as seen from the eyes of the ordinary soldier, sparing us little in his descriptions.