{"product_id":"2026100011344-secondhand-soldiers-women","title":"Soldiers' Women","description":"\u003cp\u003eEdition: 1st ed.,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition remarks:\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBook: Good\u003cbr\u003eJacket: No dust jacket - some marks on spine and corners\u003cbr\u003ePages: Yellowed\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSet against the volatile backdrop of wartime Australia, Soldiers' Women chronicles the turbulent lives of women left behind as their husbands and lovers march off to the theatres of the Second World War. Xavier Herbert's unflinching narrative centres on a cast of Sydney women navigating desire, loneliness, infidelity, and moral compromise as the social fabric of their world unravels under the pressures of conflict. With fierce psychological precision, Herbert presents a society caught between the old codes of respectability and the urgent, transgressive freedoms that war paradoxically unleashes.\n\nHerbert, best known for his monumental Australian novel Capricornia, brings the same bold, satirical eye to this deeply human portrait of gender, sexuality, and social hypocrisy. Soldiers' Women stands as a significant, if controversial, work in the Australian literary canon — frank in its treatment of female desire at a time when such frankness was deeply confronting — and leaves the reader questioning whether it is war itself, or the society it exposes, that is the true antagonist.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Secondhand Stock","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50573179683035,"sku":"2026100011344-SECONDHAND","price":25.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0523\/7646\/9701\/files\/6b2ef1be-36c6-4b25-84b8-e6abc3bb6fdd.png?v=1791167797","url":"https:\/\/bookgrocer.com\/products\/2026100011344-secondhand-soldiers-women","provider":"Book Grocer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}