Though it is about people who took part in WW I or suffered through it, Faulkner's first novel is in no sense a book about war. Nor is Soldiers' Pay a book about peace. It is a book about disillusion and fulfillment, about sensuality and beauty, about love and hate and all the human emotions that shake us in Armageddon or in peace. It is a story for our own time, a story moving and intense, a story blended with humor and insight and pity.