In 1998, the Modern Library ranked The Good Soldier 30th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. Set just before World War I, the novel is told using a series of flashbacks in non-chronological order, through a rather unreliable narrator; for as it turns out, the story is not what we are led to believe at the beginning. The novel’s original title was “The Saddest Storyâ€, from the novels opening lines “This is the saddest story I have ever heardâ€; however, with the onset of World War I, the publishers asked Ford for a new title, to which he sarcastically suggested “The Good Soldierâ€, and so it was named.