Storm of Steel

A memoir of astonishing power, savagery and ashen lyricism that illuminates the horrors as well as the fascination of total First World War, presenting the conflict through the eyes of an ordinary German soldier. It provides an account of the terrors of the Western Front and of the sickening allure that made men keep fighting on for 4 long years.

Undoubtedly the most powerful memoir of any war I have ever read ... Storm of Steel combines the most astonishing literary gifts with absorption with war in every detail. It has German loyalties and a German sensibility, but not a trace of propaganda. It is particular, yet universal ... What Jünger saw and recorded was, to use his own word, 'primordial'. It takes great art to convey that appalling simplicity

Storm of Steel is what so many books claim to be but are not: a classic account of war

Hofmann's interpretation is superb

Unique in the literature of this or any other war is its brilliantly vivid conjuration of the immediacy and intensity of battle

Ernst Junger (Author)
Ernst Jünger , the son of a wealthy chemist, ran away from home to join the Foreign Legion. His father dragged him back, but he returned to military service when he joined the German army on the outbreak of the First World War. Storm of Steel was Jünger's first book, published in 1920. Jünger died in 1998.

Michael Hofmann (Translator)
Michael Hofmann is a poet and translator from the German. For Penguin he has translated four books by Hans Fallada, in addition to works by Franz Kafka, Ernst Jünger, Irmgard Keun and Jakob Wassermann.



Ernst Junger (Author)
Ernst Jünger , the son of a wealthy chemist, ran away from home to join the Foreign Legion. His father dragged him back, but he returned to military service when he joined the German army on the outbreak of the First World War. Storm of Steel was Jünger's first book, published in 1920. Jünger died in 1998.

Michael Hofmann (Translator)
Michael Hofmann is a poet and translator from the German. For Penguin he has translated four books by Hans Fallada, in addition to works by Franz Kafka, Ernst Jünger, Irmgard Keun and Jakob Wassermann.