{"product_id":"2026200016253-secondhand-friends-and-heroes","title":"Friends And Heroes","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition remarks:\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBook: Good\u003cbr\u003eJacket: No dust jacket\u003cbr\u003ePages: Good\u003cbr\u003eCondition remarks: Condition as shown in image\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe final chapter of one of the twentieth century's most luminous wartime sagas, Friends and Heroes brings Olivia Manning's celebrated Balkan Trilogy to a shattering close as Harriet and Guy Pringle flee the shadow of Nazi occupation to the fragile sanctuary of Athens. Set against the backdrop of a doomed and beautiful city — the Acropolis glittering above a world on the brink of collapse — Manning chronicles the couple's precarious existence among expatriates, diplomats, and dreamers, all clinging to normalcy as the German war machine advances inexorably southward. The novel captures, with devastating precision, the texture of a civilisation caught between its ancient grandeur and its imminent destruction.\n\nManning's prose is spare yet deeply evocative, and her portrait of a marriage under siege — intellectually vital yet emotionally unresolved — remains one of the great achievements of British wartime fiction. Drawing on her own experiences as a diplomat's wife in Athens during the Second World War, she renders the moral ambiguities of survival, loyalty, and love with unsentimental clarity. For those who have not yet encountered the Pringles, Friends and Heroes is both a masterful standalone and an irresistible invitation to return to the very beginning.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Secondhand Stock","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49342774116571,"sku":"2026200016253-SECONDHAND","price":10.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0523\/7646\/9701\/files\/60678a2e-505c-4d78-bcd5-f3740274016c.png?v=1790049105","url":"https:\/\/bookgrocer.com\/products\/2026200016253-secondhand-friends-and-heroes","provider":"Book Grocer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}