Operation Heartbreak

Orphaned in the first months of World War One when his father is killed in action, Willie Maryington dreams only of joining the same cavalry regiment and going to the front. The Armistice dashes seventeen-year-old Willie’s plans, but not his dreams of glory, and he makes the regiment the center of his adult existence. As the years go by, Willie falls increasingly out of step with the modern machinery of war and modes of civilian life. When hostilities break out again between Germany and England, Willie has become a relic. No one could guess that he would be chosen for a mission whose outcome might well decide the course of the Second World War.

Inspired by a real-life triumph of British counterintelligence (codenamed “Operation Mincemeat”), and based on classified sources that Duff Cooper was privy to as a member of Churchill’s war cabinet, Operation Heartbreak was suppressed by the British government until 1950.  A work of “jewel-like brevity and intensity” (New York Herald Tribune), it is a study in nostalgia and bewildered idealism to place beside the novels of Joseph Roth and Ford Madox Ford.

“Kudos to the iconoclastic reprint house McNally Editions for unearthing Operation Heartbreak by Duff Cooper, a 1950 work that pulls off the trick of revealing the fascinating hidden workings of the British War Office within a supremely moving and well-wrought tale . . . A perceptive and fondly comic study of an orphaned aristocrat named Willie Maryngton . . . like Bertie Wooster cast in a tragic role . . . And it is this hopeless, supererogatory soul who, in a freakish turn of events, becomes central to the secretive military mission known here as Operation Heartbreak . . . As unexpected as it is affecting.”

—Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal

“It is the novel I enjoyed more than any other in the immediate post-war years, and one I have read many times since with undiminished pleasure and growing admiration for Duff Cooper's skill. It is a story of why men go to war, it is also a heart-wrenching love story; a wonderful novel by a masterly writer that should be on everyone's bookshelf—and not borrowed but bought.”

—Nina Bawden

“[A] little masterpiece.”

—Compton MacKenzie

“A first novel of great distinction . . . a study in frustration of an unusual kind . . . a most ingenious if rather macabre ending, perfectly in keeping with the story's prevailing mood—a daring combination of irony and pathos . . . a delightful tragi-comedy of military manners. It has been constructed by Duff Cooper with a truly dramatic economy and told with humour, deep feeling and considerable skill.” 

—Patrick Gibbs, Daily Telegraph

“Willie’s rigid adherence to the old order marks him as either heroic or foolish in the manner of Stevens, the head butler in Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day . . . The novel’s understated tone charms. Cooper’s portrait of the interwar years is an appealing literary curiosity.”

—Publishers Weekly

“A rare book, written with wonderful economy and perfect timing.”

—Norman Shrapnel, Manchester Guardian

“A profile in modest failure which is disciplined in its artistry and quite touching.”

—Kirkus, Starred Review

“As creditable, as surprising, as abundantly and elegantly good, as anything else Duff Cooper turned his mind and hand to . . . It is perhaps a little astonishing that a man so blessed with talent and facility should have been granted such insight into the predicament of his tongue-tied and monoglot and club-bound countrymen.”

—Michael Hofmann, from the Afterword

Alfred Duff Cooper (1890–1954) was a statesman, diplomat, and historian. He was a decorated officer during the First World War and entered Parliament in 1923. He remained a politician until 1938, when he resigned in protest at Britain's appeasement policy toward Nazi Germany. Called back to office by Winston Churchill in 1940, his wartime career culminated in his appointment as Ambassador to France. Shortly before his death he was made 1st Viscount Norwich. He was married to Lady Diana Cooper, the famed society debutant, actress, and writer. Operation Heartbreak is his only novel. 

Michael Hofmann is a German-born, British-educated poet and translator. He is the author of two books of essays and five books of poems, most recently One Lark, One Horse. Among his translations are plays by Bertolt Brecht and Patrick Süskind; the selected poems of Durs Grünbein and Gottfried Benn; and novels and stories by, among others, Franz Kafka; Peter Stamm; his father, Gert Hofmann; and fourteen books by Joseph Roth. He teaches in the English Department at the University of Florida.

Operation Heartbreak • Paperback ISBN: 9781961341029

Jan 30, 2024 • McNALLY EDITIONS no. 26

5" x 8.5" • 176 pages • $18.00

eBook ISBN: 9781961341036