A Stricken Field

Martha Gellhorn was an American journalist who served as a war correspondent for most of her 60-year career. As she wrote in the afterword to A Stricken Field, “I had no qualification except eyes and ears; I learned as I went. In 1938, I became a foreign correspondent as well, again because I was on the spot. My qualification was that I had spent most of my life since 1930 in Europe, involved in politics the way a tadpole is involved in a pond.”

Gellhorn left Europe in January 1939. A Stricken Field represents somewhat of a catharsis, spilling her “accumulated rage and grief” by sharing her experience in Czechoslovakia. Mary Douglas, an American journalist clearly modeled on Gellhorn herself, arrives in Prague shortly after the show more Munich Agreement, which ceded a portion of Czechoslovakia to Germany in an attempt to avoid war. But this resulted in refugees being expelled from Prague to face concentration camps, prison, or death in their countries of origin. The situation becomes more personal when it directly impacts Mary’s friend Rita, and Mary attempts to use her journalist credentials to influence government officials.

This is an intense, dramatic, and ultimately sad book. It’s also difficult to read today, when the world is dealing with a myriad of refugee crises with so many obstacles in the way and seemingly no end in sight. A Stricken Field is well-written, but perhaps not for everyone. show less

A novel about the plight of refugees who cannot stay ahead of the advancing Nazi invaders, set in Prague in October of 1938, when formerly protected refugees from Austria, Germany and Sudetenland are now being given mere days to leave the city under expulsion orders that could mean returning to "homes" where they are now considered criminals or traitors. Two main narrators, an American journalist much like Gellhorn herself, and a German woman named Rita, tell this difficult story from very different perspectives with one focus: the heroic efforts of those who dared to resist the insanity that overtook Europe in those brutal years. The novel was written in 1940, before the full extent of the horror was shown to the world, and it is more show more powerful for that, because we know. And because 80 years hence, it still feels timely.
Review written March 2019 show less