Description
The Strand Magazine Issue LXXVIII — Featuring Edith Wharton’s “The Men Who Saved the World” and Alexander McCall Smith
This special issue of The Strand Magazine features Edith Wharton’s “The Men Who Saved the World,” a rare wartime story appearing in our pages for the first time.
Set in the summer of 1918, as the First World War nears its end, the story unfolds inside a French château just a few miles from the front. The dining room has been restored to its old elegance — orchids, candles, fine china, glassware, and the rituals of polite society — though earlier in the war, that same room had served as a place where an army surgeon amputated limbs from dawn to dark. Outside, the guns can still be heard. Inside, the guests resume their old habits of conversation, comfort, and decorum.
Appearing in print in this issue, “The Men Who Saved the World” offers a striking example of Wharton’s wartime fiction and her sharp social observation. In elegant, unsettling prose, Wharton explores the divide between those who endure war’s brutality and those who learn to live beside it, ignore it, or fold it back into the habits of civilized life.
Also featured is an in-depth interview with beloved international bestselling author Alexander McCall Smith, whose humane, witty, and deeply civilized storytelling has made him one of the most cherished voices in contemporary fiction. In this wide-ranging conversation, McCall Smith reflects on storytelling, character, philosophy, and the enduring appeal of fiction that finds wisdom in everyday life. The issue also includes an interview with Sophie Hannah, discussing poetry, puzzles, Agatha Christie, psychological suspense, and the darker side of human nature.
Plus: Walter Mosley’s “Ike Tooms,” Stephen Spotswood’s “Between the Heart and a Hard Place,” Mike Adamson’s Sherlock Holmes mystery “A Silence in Erith,” and reviews of the latest mysteries and thrillers.
Over the years, The Strand has featured rare and previously unpublished works by Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Raymond Chandler, H.G. Wells, Agatha Christie, Dashiell Hammett, Tennessee Williams, Louisa May Alcott, and Shirley Jackson.
