num_pages: 304
description: At the fashionable German spa town Bad Nauheim, two wealthy, fin de siecle couples -- one British, the other American -- meet for their yearly assignation. As their story moves back and forth in time between 1902 and 1914, the fragile surface propriety of the pre -- World War I society in which these four characters live is ruptured -- revealing deceit, hatred, infidelity, and betrayal. "The Good Soldier" is Edward Ashburnham, who, as an adherent to the moral code of the English upper class, is nonetheless consumed by a passion for women younger than his wife -- a stoic but fallible figure in what his American friend, John Dowell, calls "the saddest story I ever heard."
language: English
title: The Good Soldier
titlecomplete: The Good Soldier
characters: Edward Ashburnham, Leonora Ashburnham, John Dowell, Nancy Rufford, Bagshawe, Florence Dowell, Maisie Maidan
genres: Fiction, English Literature, British Literature, Literature, Romance, Classics, Novels, Historical Fiction, 20th Century, Literary Fiction
ratings_count: 26088
places: England
publisher: Vintage