From Homer’s epic to the 21st century Twitter novel, war, undeniably one of the most unsettling human experiences, has been a constant presence in literature. The 33rd AIC issue hosts
academic articles approaching a whole war thematic complex (desolation and suffering, absence and loss, alienation and
despair, abuse and trauma) as depicted in works signed by Ancient and modern Greek, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, French, Franco-Afghan, Franco-Iraqi, German, Cameroonian, Lebanese and Asian American literary authors. Surpassing the heroic stage of premodern literature, war ceases to be essentially a means to achieve personal glory, and shifts towards new meanings and new types of heroism. The relevance of this
thematic complex has led to the appearance of the “war literature” label for a large range of direct and indirect bellic experiences: occupation war, religious war, civil war, World War, colonial war, interethnic war, Cold War, War on Terrorism – to name the types of collective conflicts evoked by the contributors to the present volume.

As here shown, war means more than the battlefield; the war spectre covers the pre-war and the post war states of affairs, touching deep cultural, psychological, social and political issues. It also comes to mean more than clashing armies: once unseen or peripherical
figures of the traditional war scene (women, civilians, veterans, exiles…) step into the
foreground, to challenge and replace conventional ways of thinking war. Through the memory and imagination functions, literature becomes a complement and a substitute for history, taking war from the battlefield to the field of discourse. As used by writers, words have the power to form – deform – reform reality, to deconstruct and reconstruct the
official version of history, to retrieve and reinvent the past. Functioning as an instrument of recollection, testimony, and healing, war literature builds ties between generations and merge individual traumas into the common, collective, transhistorical drama.