ABSTRACT
War affects life writing and lives affect war writing. In the eight articles in this volume, we see forms of life writing breaking their boundaries under the pressure of war. The ways in which this pressure is exerted are many and various. War has a massive impact on the individual (it can force a person into a new role, insist on new beginnings, efface identity, expose the body to violence); imposes certain narratives (military narratives, national narratives, protest narratives and personal narratives, among them); creates a demand for new life stories (military leaders, rank-andfile soldiers, combatants and non-combatants come into being), not least through the impulse to memorialise; produces tales that individuals need to tell (often cathartically); and creates an impetus to understand (on the part of both combatant and civilian). In such circumstances, standard forms of life writing (diary/journal, memoir, autobiography, biography) buckle. War writing has fewer (if any) standard forms, but as the traditional modes of life writing are manipulated, stretched, broken and eschewed, the telling of war that occurs simultaneously undergoes similar treatment.
