Ford Madox Ford’s novel The Good Soldier (1915) was lauded by Graham Greene as a “masterpiece” and a “study of the way memory works.” Set in Europe just prior to the First World War, it is a fruitfully puzzling account of how an American couple and an English counterpart (featuring the “good soldier” of the title) befriend and deceive each other. Balanced between pathos and irony, The Good Soldier is a tale told by an

American narrator (married to a woman from Stamford, Connecticut!) whose knowledge of himself and the events he describes is by turns incisive and clouded by strategic repressions. Is he serious? Wonderfully compact in design and with one of the best styles of the twentieth century, this novel offers at once the pleasures of detective fiction, a psychological study of love and betrayal, and biting satire.