Pretend it’s the dead of winter. Pretend there’s a roaring fire. Pretend you want to lose yourself in a book of epic proportions. I can’t imagine a better choice than Helprin’s magnum opus.

Like other monumental works (think Tolstoy’s War and Peace), A Soldier works on a grand scale, conveying the sweep of history and the birth of the modern era. But at the same time—again, much like Tolstoy—he gives that story its depth and poignancy by focusing on the details. By seeing the world, in all its complexities, through the eyes of a single man. Sometimes he’s a callow youth, experiencing war firsthand. Sometimes an aged and crippled survivor, viewing that time from afar. Whatever the perspective or framing device, Helprin always gets it right, whether it’s the raw terror of combat or an old man’s reverie.

But rather than just ape the established tropes of great historical fiction, Helprin gives us a fresh perspective. Adds unexpected moments of magic realism, surrealistic invention, and absurdist humor. Much like Joseph Heller in his classic Catch 22, Helprin portrays the horror of war by pointing out its folly. Never is life so enticing, so real, as at the moment of its extinction, and nothing illustrates mankind better, our potential for good and evil, as seeing it expressed in our darkest invention, the catastrophe we call war.

Clocking in at just over eight hundred pages, this isn’t some pool-side read. Like any great book, it deserves respect, and the time it takes to read it. But if you want to journey outside your life, and our world of tweets and selfies, then you’ll find no better time machine than A Soldier of the Great War.