Welcome to The Wars

The narrator describes the first steps of his investigation as he painstakingly sifts through pieces Robert Ross' life. In imagining the stillness of the archive; the shafts of afternoon sunlight exposing suspended dust particles; the archivist perched silently at her desk; the suppressed coughs of other researchers; and the narrator's hushed tones, the reader gets the sense that it is a place of reverence. A place where objective reflection on the past warms cold cases and humanises history in a way that illuminates the paradox of both the constancy and diversty of the human condition.

While This book explores the decension of people into brutish beasts blinded by the instict for self preservation, its main theme is that of redemption. Robert redeems himself from guilt in the death of his sister by protecting the mute innocents exploited or ignored or somtimes literally tramped upon in WWI. And it will be in the defence of these animals that he sacrifices himself, thus atoning for the original sin of his negligence.