The Return of the Soldier tells the tale of a shell-shocked soldier who believes he is in love with a working-class woman from his past rather than married to his aristocratic bride when he returns home from the First World War. Whether to bring him back to reality and send him to the front or whether to let him stay safe in his delusion is up to his family and doctor to decide. It is a short novel with an apparently straightforward plot that is a classic of modernist literature and serves as a starting point for discussions of some of the most persistent themes of the twentieth century.