ABSTRACT
Ernest Hemingway's 1940 For Whom the Bell Tolls, a novel set during the Spanish Civil War, won no prizes, though the fact that it did not receive the Pulitzer nor did any novel of that year became a kind of commendation. June, 1940, Germany invaded the Soviet Union and less than a month later, the German 'Blitz' of England began. On December 7, 1941, the United States was drawn into World War II when the Japanese bombed US troops and ships at Pearl Harbor. Robert Penn Warren's 1946 All the King's Men was a 'war' novel only in the way state and national politics had the power to usurp the rights of private citizens. French readers had always followed the works of William Faulkner, however, and living through the enormity of their country's destruction during World War II had created even more empathy for Faulkner's South.
