The Good Soldier (1915) by Ford Madox Ford is a modernist classic, an intricately worked novel. It tells the stories of two outwardly happy couples who meet at a health spa in Germany just before the start of the First World War, and whose loveless, adultery-ridden relationships are strained and gradually disintegrate, with tragic consequences. The story is narrated by the character John Dowell, half of one of the couples whose dissolving relationships form the subject of the novel.