The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford

The Good Soldier (1915) by Ford Madox Ford is a modernist novel that tells the story of two seemingly respectable couples-the English Ashburnhams and the American Dowells-whose lives are intertwined in deception, infidelity, and tragedy. Narrated by John Dowell, an unreliable and often bewildered storyteller, the novel gradually reveals the affair between Edward Ashburnham (the "good soldier") and Florence Dowell, as well as Edward's other entanglements. Beneath the facade of aristocratic manners and moral uprightness lies a world of betrayal, hypocrisy, and emotional collapse. Through its fragmented narrative and shifting perspectives, the novel explores themes of truth, illusion, passion, and the destructive consequences of repressed desires.