{"product_id":"lemaitre-pierre-the-great-swindle-9781848665798","title":"The Great Swindle","description":"Winner of the prestigious Prix Goncourt, a timeless story of how war transforms lives in unexpected and often tragic ways as seen through the eyes of three World War I vets The year is 1918, the war on the Western Front all but over. An ambitious officer, Lieutenant Henry D'Aulnay-Pradelle, sends two soldiers over the top and then surreptitiously shoots them in the back to incite his men to attack the German lines. When another of D'Aulnay-Pradelle's soldiers, Albert Maillard, reaches the bodies and discovers how they died, the lieutenant shoves him into a shell hole to silence him. Albert is rescued by fellow soldier, the artist Edouard Péricourt, who takes a bullet in the face. The war ends and both men recover, but Edouard is permanently disfigured, and fakes his death to prevent his family from seeing him as a cripple. In gratitude for Edouard's rescue, Albert becomes the injured man's companion and caregiver. Finding that the postwar gratitude for the soldiers' service is nothing more than lip-service to an empty idea, the two men scramble to survive, ultimately devising a scam to take money for never-to-be-built war memorials from small towns. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Pradelle has married Edouard's sister Madeline and is running a scam of his own that involves the exhumation of war victims. In this sorrowful, heart-searching novel, the interwoven lives of these three men create a tapestry of the human condition as seen through the lens of war, revealing brutality and compassion, heroism and cowardice, in equal measure.","brand":"Quercus Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Used - good","offer_id":53412894146902,"sku":"9781848665798-G","price":6.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"Used - very good","offer_id":53605981159766,"sku":"9781848665798-V","price":6.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0925\/5829\/5382\/files\/product_image_9781848665798_1.jpg?v=1778096576","url":"https:\/\/www.momoxbooks.com\/products\/lemaitre-pierre-the-great-swindle-9781848665798","provider":"momoxbooks","version":"1.0","type":"link"}