Random harvest

Set in the aftermath of the First World War, this novel follows a soldier left badly damaged by shell shock. Having lost his memory, he rebuilds an ordinary life in a new place, all the while searching for the person he was before the war and the years he can no longer account for.

James Hilton, best known for Goodbye, Mr. Chips, wrote the book as a story of identity and the quiet pull of the past. Its focus stays on the man's inner struggle and on the people who come to matter to him as his new life takes shape.

Hilton's novel was published in 1941 and later adapted into a 1942 film starring Ronald Colman and Greer Garson.