Meek Heritage (1938) by Frans Eemil Sillanpää and Sardinian Brigade (1939) by Emilio Lussu

Two historical anti-war novels published by Alfred A. Knopf in the late 1930s, with related jacket designs by William Addison Dwiggins, using City.

Originally published in Finnish as Hurskas Kurjuus in 1919, Meek Heritage is the third novel by Frans Eemil Sillanpää (1888–1964), Finland’s first Nobel Laureate for literature. It’s about how the Russian Revolution affected peasants in Finland and how this led to the Finnish Civil War. The first American edition was translated by Alexander Matson and published in 1938.

In Sardinian Brigade (1939), Emilio Lussu (1890–1975) recounts his experience of mountain warfare with the Sassari Brigade in World War I, fighting the forces of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and depicts the atrocity and insanity of war. Originally titled Un anno sull’Altipiano, it was translated from the Italian by Marion Enthoven Rawson.