The Great Fortune: The Balkan Trilogy 1
READING GROUP Reading Around the World: R is for Romania
Tuesday 26th May 2026 at 6:15pm
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In our first alphabetical literary circumnavigation, we spent reading time in Rwanda with Scholastique Mukasonga’s Our Lady of the Nile. Now, we are journeying, in time and place, to Romania.
The Great Fortune is a novel by English writer Olivia Manning first published in 1960. It forms the opening part of a six-part novel series called Fortunes Of War. The Fortunes Of War series is split into two trilogies, The Balkan Trilogy and The Levant Trilogy. The novels tell an unfolding story of how the Second World War impacts on the lives of a group of British expatriates.
We are reading the first in the Balkan Trilogy.
1939. Newly-weds Guy and Harriet Pringle step aboard the train to Bucharest. Guy’s lecturing job awaits, alongside friends and the ever-ardent Sophie – but for Harriet, alone and naive, it’s a strange new life.
As Guy’s world collides with that of his new bride, Harriet realises how little she knows the man she has married. Manning’s masterpiece, alive with exhilarating characters, is a haunting evocation of young love and the uncertainty of war.
If you’d like to join the review discussion of this book, please contact us to reserve your place.
