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Audiobook edition · 11 h 2 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
Who do you become when war takes away the comfort that has always kept you safe?
In The Rough Road, William John Locke follows a young man whose protected life leaves him little reason to expect hardship. Then the First World War pulls him out of that familiar world. The habits of comfort no longer seem enough. What makes a soldier, and can someone who never expects to fight learn courage?
Love and duty pull in different directions as pressure begins to reshape him. Locke keeps his attention on the person inside the soldier: his beliefs about himself, his affections, and his capacity to change. Gentle humour and a friendly narrator bring warmth to a hard story, asking whether decent feeling can survive when an easy life falls away.
What you’ll discover
- A sheltered life unsettled Follow a young man beyond the protection that once shields him from hard decisions.
- The question of courage Explore whether bravery is something a person can learn under the pressure of war.
- Love beside duty Discover how affection helps shape a man whose life no longer follows its expected course.
- Humour in hard times Find warmth in Locke's gentle humour without losing sight of the hardship his character faces.
- Change from within Watch hardship test the distance between who someone believes he is and who he becomes.
Who will love it
For readers who love novels of the First World War and stories of personal change through hardship, with gentle humour, humane characters, and the pull between love and duty.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Comfort is where the story begins
- War tests what people believe about themselves
- Love and duty pull in different directions
- A gentle voice tells a hard story
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La Route difficile
by William John Locke · 1918
War pulls a sheltered young man from his comfortable life and tests whether courage can be learned.
Medium level10–20 hours to read25 languages
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In short
The Rough Road is a novel by William John Locke, published in 1918, in the last year of the First World War. Locke was a British writer who had won a wide readership before the war with warm, humane stories about odd and likeable people.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
Comfort is where the story begins
Locke wrote in the years when Britain was a country in which many young men had grown up expecting a quiet life. Families of some means could shield their sons from hardship, from risk and from hard decisions. A novel about the war needs a starting point, and Locke chooses a man who has known little of the rough side of life.
This choice gives the book its energy. A reader who has never held a rifle can stand beside the central figure and feel how strange the new demands are. The distance between his old habits and the soldier he is asked to become supplies much of the drama, and some of the humour too.
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Who wrote The Rough Road?
The Rough Road was written by William John Locke, a British novelist who died in 1930. He was widely read in the early twentieth century for warm, humane stories about unusual and likeable people.
When was The Rough Road written?
The novel was published in 1918, during the final year of the First World War. It was written while the conflict was still going on, so it reflects how people then tried to understand it.
What kind of book is The Rough Road?
It is a novel set during the First World War. It focuses on a sheltered young man and how war changes him, with attention to character, love and duty rather than battle alone.
The author
William John Locke
1863–1930 · British novelist
William John Locke (1863–1930) was a British novelist. He lived in England and later in France, and died in Paris. His novels include The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne (1905), Simon the Jester (1910), The Red Planet (1917), and The Rough Road (1918). He also wrote plays.
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