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The article offers an analysis of the representation of an enemy encounter in Traitor (2010), a novel by Stephen Daisley, which depicts the relationship between a young New Zealander, David, and a Turkish doctor, Mahmoud, during the First World War. In my interpretation, I show the multiple facets of Sufi ethics as embraced by David under the influence of his Ottoman friend. Applying theoretical approaches rooted in the philosophy of politics, I argue that friendship between enemies in Daisley's novel is a political claim that challenges dichotomous ways of thinking and questions the meaning of such concepts as traitor, friend and enemy. Furthermore, I approach the protagonist's dissent and conscientious objection as deeply ethical acts of embodied resistance. Finally, I demonstrate that the novel represents an intriguing intervention in Australia and New Zealand's Anzac commemorative discourse, thus contributing to a twenty‐first‐century reassessment of the memory of the First World War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the representation of Canadian prisoners of war in Alan Cumyn's Great War novel The Famished Lover (2006). Relying on historical sources, I attempt to show how the experience of captivity, marginalized for a long time in historical research, alters our understanding of the First World War and the evolution of forced labour in the twentieth century. I approach Canadian POWs as missing persons, disappeared in the biopolitical regime of the POW camp, the post-war discourses of commemoration, and the gaps in cultural memory. The article explores Cumyn's representation of the camp as a biopolitical space and the production of the POW as Agambenian bare life. Central to the analysis are issues of trauma, masculinity, and heroic defiance. I also engage with the long-lasting sequelae of captivity, as well as the difficult reintegration of the returned POW, based on the example of the protagonist of the novel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article engages with the cultural impact of John McCrae's canonical poem "In Flanders Fields" (1915), and more specifically the permutations of cultural memory and heritage discourse in In Flanders Fields: 100 Years: Writing on War, Loss and Remembrance, edited by Amanda Betts and published in 2015. It shows how thirteen Canadians explore the revolutionary role of the poem in Canadian collective and individual memory, as well as its omissions and misrepresentations. The article juxtaposes the cultural history of the poem with Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est" and its contemporary transformations, also showing how selected essays in the collection bridge the First World War with other armed conflicts. Applying Ann Rigney's terminology, the article approaches the poem as a textual monument, demonstrating how "In Flanders Fields" has evolved from the role of a stabilizer in Canadian cultural memory, providing a cultural frame for later recollections, to that of a calibrator, becoming a benchmark for critical reflection on dominant memorial practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on Bereft (2010), a novel by Australian writer Chris Womersley, which applies the framework of trauma to depict the (failed) reintegration of the returning soldiers after the First World War. Using Gothic and Apocalyptic tropes, Womersley addresses the question of the aftermath of violence in the lives of an Australian family and the Australian nation. By combining the insights of trauma and Gothic studies, the article demonstrates how Bereft undermines the meta-narrative of Australian participation in the First World War, questioning the myth of Anzac and national cohesion. It proposes to read the novel as an example of critical mourning, which, rather than cure from trauma, suggests a re-examination of the dramatic sequels of the imperial conflict. Rage seems to offer here an intriguing alternative to the forgetful practices of commemoration. By revising the militarized national mythology, Bereft redefi nes the First World War in terms of loss, trauma and desolation, and negotiates a place for broken bodies and minds in Australian cultural memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]