Memoir of a war poet
DOUGLAS, Keith. Alamein to Zem Zem. London: PL. 1946.
8vo. Original quarter red cloth, spine lettered in gilt; pp. 141, [1], xvi; with colour frontispiece, two plates, and several in-text illustrations by the author; spine faded, extremities lightly rubbed; contents a little toned, otherwise a very good copy; ownership inscriptions to front free endpaper.
First edition.
Published two years after his death in action in Normandy in 1944, Alamein to Zem Zem is a military memoir drawn from Keith Douglas’s experience as a tank commander during the Second Battle of El Alamein. “Zem Zem” refers to the river valley where Douglas was wounded. He described his poetry as “extrospective” – concerned with the external world rather than with inward emotion – and he is now regarded as one of the twentieth century’s finest soldier-poets, celebrated for his matter-of-fact, unsentimental portrayal of the brutal realities of war.
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