Arthur Machen’s “The Bowmen”

Sources Cited:

The Angels of Mons: The Bowmen and Other Legends of the War, by Arthur Machen. Available for free at Project Gutenberg!

“Rumors of Angels: A Legend of the First World War,” by David Clarke. Folklore, 2002. Preview available here (full access only with JSTOR acct or library access :( )

Margin of Victory: Five Battles that Changed the Face of Modern War, by Douglas Macgregor. Naval Institute Press, 2023. Publisher’s website. A surprisingly engaging, kind of gossipy telling of the Battle of Mons in the first chapter!

Back of the Front, by Phyllis Campbell, not that we recommend reading it, lol. Available online HERE.

Recommended Reading:

Against the Loveless World, by Susan Abulhawa. Simon and Schuster, 2021. Publisher’s website.

From the Publisher:

In this “beautiful...urgent” novel (The New York Times), Nahr, a young Palestinian woman, fights for a better life for her family as she travels as a refugee throughout the Middle East.

As Nahr sits, locked away in solitary confinement, she spends her days reflecting on the dramatic events that landed her in prison in a country she barely knows. Born in Kuwait in the 70s to Palestinian refugees, she dreamed of falling in love with the perfect man, raising children, and possibly opening her own beauty salon. Instead, the man she thinks she loves jilts her after a brief marriage, her family teeters on the brink of poverty, she’s forced to prostitute herself, and the US invasion of Iraq makes her a refugee, as her parents had been. After trekking through another temporary home in Jordan, she lands in Palestine, where she finally makes a home, falls in love, and her destiny unfolds under Israeli occupation. Nahr’s subversive humor and moral ambiguity will resonate with fans of My Sister, The Serial Killer, and her dark, contemporary struggle places her as the perfect sister to Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties.

Written with Susan Abulhawa’s distinctive “richly detailed, beautiful, and resonant” (Publishers Weekly) prose, this powerful novel presents a searing, darkly funny, and wholly unique portrait of a Palestinian woman who refuses to be a victim.

Auē, by Becky Manawatu. Mākaro Press, 2019. Publisher’s website.

From the publisher:

Taukiri was born into sorrow. Auē can be heard in the sound of the sea he loves and hates, and in the music he draws out of the guitar that was his father’s. It spills out of the gang violence that killed his father and sent his mother into hiding, and the shame he feels about abandoning his eight-year-old brother to a violent home.

But Ārama is braver than he looks, and he has a friend and his friend has a dog, and the three of them together might just be strong enough to turn back the tide of sorrow. As long as there’s aroha to give and stories to tell and a good supply of plasters.

Here is a novel that is both raw and sublime, a compelling new voice in New Zealand fiction. Haere mai, Becky Manawatu.

XOXO