The Middle Parts Of Fortune

Based on the author’s own experiences, The Middle Parts of Fortune is a breathtaking account of the Great War and the men who fought it.


First published anonymously in 1929 because its language was considered far too frank for public circulation, The Middle Parts of Fortune was hailed by T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, by Lawrence of Arabia and Ernest Hemingway, as an extraordinary novel. Its author was in fact Frederic Manning, an Australian writer who fought in the Battle of the Somme in 1916, and who told his story of men at war from the perspective of an ordinary soldier.


Never before published in Australia, The Middle Parts of Fortune is now recognised as a twentieth-century classic. This edition includes an introduction by Simon Caterson.


Frederic Manning was born in Sydney in 1882. Manning’s military experience informed his great novel, The Middle Parts of Fortune, which was originally published in 1929 under the author’s military number, Private 19022. Frederic Manning died in England in 1935. It was not until 1946 that Manning was identified as the author of one of the greatest war novels ever written.


Simon Caterson is a Melbourne-based freelance writer and the author of Hoax Nation: Australian Fakes and Frauds from Plato to Norma Khouri.

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‘The finest and noblest book of men in war.’ Ernest Hemingway


A classic of enduring validity. I am glad he was an Australian, for this is a profoundly democratic book. I know of no story of the first world war which is so effectively written, not only from the ranks, but from the point of view of the ranks it remains, with Richard Mahony, almost alone among the products of Australian writers.’ Australian Book Review


‘No praise could be too sheer for this book. It justifies every heat of praise. Its virtues will be recognised more and more as time goes on.’ Lawrence of Arabia


‘A wise book among the most thoughtful novels of the war.’ New York Times Book Review