The Adventurous Simplicissimus

A boy is driven off his farm by soldiers in the Thirty Years War, becomes a fool, a soldier, a highwayman and a hermit, and survives the ruin of Germany. Grimmelshausen fought in that war himself; this is the first great German novel and the plainest account anyone left of what those thirty years did. Fifty-four plates span Holbein to Munch, from siege and battle scenes to allegories of war, matching the Thirty Years War that fills these pages.