Tatterdemalion

Tatterdemalion gathers John Galsworthy's wartime and peacetime sketches into a searching portrait of a society unsettled by conflict and struggling toward peace. Across these sharply observed pieces, music, fear, patriotism, and prejudice collide: a German woman living under a false name finds brief refuge in a concert; a rejected laborer's thwarted sacrifice hardens into pride; and a peace meeting descends into comic, bruising violence as men who oppose the war are battered by its fervor. Galsworthy also traces the corrosive force of anti-German feeling through Harburn, whose easy geniality becomes fanaticism, and through the Holsteig family, interned, isolated, and wounded by suspicion. Yet the book is not only harsh. In a secluded glen, a child's singing is mistaken for fairy magic, revealing a tender world of imagination beneath the shadow of war. Elegant, ironic, and humane, these sketches capture grief, dignity, tenderness, and the uneasy aftermath of upheaval. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.