A post-war novel is exactly what it sounds like, which is a novel written after a war. In regard to the modern literary world, the term is most commonly associated with the respective aftermath of World War I and World War II, but it can also apply to some books written after the Vietnam War. The 1920s saw an extraordinary amount of books being published, as soldiers from World War I were finally ready to open up about their experiences. All Quiet on the Western Front is no doubt the most famous and acclaimed of these books.

Post-war novels tend to deal with disillusion and political unrest. They are stories of people who undergo great difficulty to reintegrate themselves into a world in which they no longer feel they fit in.