The Kingdom Round the Corner: A Novel

A war‑scarred soldier steps off the train in March 1919, his legs still bearing the ache of bullet wounds and his mind the fog of months spent under doctors’ lamps. The world he returns to has moved on without him, bustling forward while he struggles to catch up, unsure whether his old ambitions still fit the new age. As he watches the city awaken, he feels both the relief of freedom and the unsettling realization that his youthful prime may have slipped away.

Haunted by a letter from Terry, the woman who once promised to meet him at the station, he confronts the unsettling label of “middle‑aged” that the war has thrust upon him. Determined not to surrender his spirit to the passage of years, he wrestles with the paradox of being alive yet fearing the loss of purpose. In this early chapter, his journey becomes a quiet battle between the desire to reclaim the vigor of his twenties and the reality of a life irrevocably altered by conflict.