The Fields of Anarchy
From the gilded halls of imperial Europe to the mud-choked trenches of the Western Front, the Great War ignites a world, shattering empires and consuming a generation. Through the eyes of five unforgettable characters, this sweeping, multi-narrative saga plunges readers into the heart of the cataclysm.
In London, ambitious young journalist James Sunderland chases the whispers of espionage and arms races, determined to expose the hidden truths behind a world sleepwalking towards catastrophe. His quest for the story will take him from the burning ruins of Belgium to the revolutionary chaos of Petrograd, forcing him to bear witness to the war’s unimaginable human cost.
In Berlin, idealistic student Erich Müller, his heart swelling with patriotic pride, eagerly answers the Kaiser's call. His illusions of a swift, glorious victory are brutally shattered by the industrial-scale slaughter of Verdun and the Somme, leaving him a battle-scarred veteran grappling with a profound disillusionment that mirrors the collapse of his nation.
In Paris, sheltered milliner Juliette Dubois is thrust into the war's brutal reality as a volunteer nurse. In the makeshift hospitals behind the lines, she must confront the unending tide of broken bodies and shattered minds from all sides of the conflict, discovering a resilience she never knew she possessed amidst the unrelenting suffering.
In the Balkans, fervent Serbian nationalist Dragan Petrović becomes a key operative in the clandestine plots that will ignite the continent. From the battlefields of the Balkan Wars to the frozen hell of the Albanian retreat, his fight for freedom descends into a maelstrom of unforeseen consequences, transforming him into a hardened soldier in a war of shadows.
And in the sun-scorched plains of East Africa, pragmatic German officer Heinrich Weber wages a forgotten guerrilla war under the command of the legendary Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck. Cut off from home, he and his loyal Askari soldiers fight a brilliant, desperate campaign of survival against the might of the British Empire.
Their lives, once worlds apart, are irrevocably entangled by the conflict. They will witness the fall of empires, the birth of terrifying new weapons, and the desperate search for humanity amidst the fields of anarchy. This is a story not just of generals and kings, but of the ordinary people caught in their great, terrible game—of love and loss, of courage and disillusionment, and of the profound, personal scars left by the war that was meant to end all wars.
Meticulously researched and epic in scope, The Fields of Anarchy is a powerful, character-driven saga perfect for fans of Ken Follett’s Fall of Giants and Sebastian Faulks’ Birdsong.
