The Praetorians

By: Jean Lartéguy, General Stanley McChrystal - foreword, Xan Fielding - translator

Narrated by: Paul Woodson

Jean Lartéguy's unflinching sequel to The Centurions, a searing novel of modern warfare admired by military experts, with a foreword by General Stanley McChrystal

Based on the events of May 1958 in France and Algeria, The Praetorians picks up in the footsteps of The Centurions, which was called "a stunning reflection of modern war" by Stanley McChrystal. After turning to tactics of guerilla warfare, a group of French paratroopers serving in the Algerian War is called to answer for actions they consider necessary, however immoral. Fearing another loss of French honor, they plot a coup that results in the return to power of Charles de Gaulle and the death of one of their own.

With resonance to modern conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, The Praetorians further develops some of Lartéguy's most persistent and pertinent themes: counterinsurgency, the ugly, morally conflicted nature of modern war, and the seemingly unbridgeable gulf between the experiences of soldiers and of the civilians they serve.

©1961 Presses de la Cité, an imprint of Place des éditeurs; Translation; Copyright 1963 by Penguin Random House LLC and the Random House Group; Foreword copyright 2016 by Stanley McChrystal (P)2022 Tantor

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