The Good Soldier
By Ford Madox Ford

Ford Madox Ford's extraordinary novel of passion and betrayal,and The Good Soldier, is edited with an introduction by David Bradshaw in Penguin Classics.The Dowells, a wealthy American couple, have been close friends with the Ashburnhams for years. Edward Ashburnham, a first-rate soldier, seems to be the perfect English gentleman, and Leonora his perfect wife, but beneath the surface their marriage seethes with unhappiness and deception. Our only window on the strange tangle of events surrounding Edward is provided by John Dowell, the husband he deceives. Gradually Dowell unfolds a devastating story, in which everyone's honesty is in doubt.and The Good Soldierand is a masterpiece of narrative skill and emotional depth.David Bradshaw's introduction discusses John Dowell as the classic unreliable narrator and as English literature's most fascinating enigma, and shows how Ford Madox Ford's unconventional narrative structure makesand The Good Soldierand a modernist masterwork.Ford Madox Ford (1873-1939), born in Surrey and educated in England, Germany and France, changed his original surname, Hueffer, in 1919, after having served with the British army in World War I. As well as founding both theand English Reviewand and theand Transatlantic Review, home to such writers as James Joyce, Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein, Ford was the author of more than sixty works including novels, poems, criticism, travel writing and reminiscences.and The Good Soldierand (1915) is considered his masterpiece.If you enjoyedand The Good Soldier, you might like Ford'sand Parade's End, also available in Penguin Classics, and now the subject of a major new BBC/HBO television miniseries.'A masterpiece'Julian Barnes, Booker Prize-winning author ofand The Sense of an Ending'I don't know how many times in nearly forty years I have come back to this novel'Graham Greene