THAT FORGOTTEN LITTLE WAR
What is this book all about?
That Forgotten Little War is a very realistic war novel with its fair share of the inexplicable, the magical, the bizarre, and the plain weird. What is reality, after all?
A somewhat crazy veteran Parachute Regiment NCO thinks he is a god-of-sorts, as he discovers that he is able to store the entire lives of other people (and animals, plants and rocks) in his mind and play them back at will. The fact is that he may be right, he may be some kind of a god after all. There may well be other lesser gods just like him out there. Or not.
It is 2012, and thirty years have passed since the Falklands War ended. Fourteen people who suffered through the war carry on with their inadvertently intertwined lives, in different parts of the world. Women and men, spies and nurses, soldiers and psychiatrists: some who are level-headed and some who are crazy. There are British, Argentines and even a Uruguayan. Their stories, from before, after and during the conflict, are told in ten apparently independent narratives that draw together to make up a heartrending novel with the structure of a puzzle and the vertigo of a thriller.
That Forgotten Little War cannot be classified as a book about war, love, espionage or manners. It contains all these elements, however, as well as a cinematographic beauty and a touch of the perplexing metaphysics that universal literature owes to Borges.
Reader reviews
A very good book written from many different angles with a few twist,s and turns a very compelling and moving read all the way up until the end.
5 stars
Amazon customer
I wanted an intro to the Falklands War that wouldn’t be tediously detailed, and this was great. It’s a good read, in a chaotic and funny way
4 stars
Cashy Yates
Interesting, different and readable. I enjoyed a lot of the book and not other parts. I read as much as I can about the Falklands Conflict – it was never a war. Most material is fiction so this made a change.
4 stars
Geoff Herschell
The author
Daniel E. Arias (1953), Buenos Aires. He studied literature at the University of Buenos Aires and became a science journalist for major newspapers in Argentina winning a number of awards. As well as ‘That Forgotten Little War’ he has also written: Argentina mirada y pensada (Lunwerg-Planeta, Barcelona, 2008), a coffee table book, Eternidad maldita (Alfaguara, Serie Roja, Buenos Aires, 2009), Aquella guerrita olvidada (Guid Publicaciones, 2011) and the Patagonian saga, Todos mis padres (Guid Publications, 2015).