All Quiet on the Western Front

Erich Maria Remarque, Brian Murdoch, Norman Stone

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English

EVERYMANS LIBRARY
03 December 2018

Literature, Poetry & Criticism; Classic fiction (pre c 1945); First World War fiction

Series: Everyman's Library CLASSICS

In 1914 Paul Baumer and his classmates are marched to the local recruiting office by a sentimentally patriotic form-master. On a calm October day in 1918, only a few weeks before the Armistice, Paul will be the last of them to be killed. In All Quiet on the Western Front he tells their story.

A few years after it was published in 1929 the Nazis would denounce and publicly burn Remarque's novel for insulting the heroic German army - in other words, for 'telling it like it was' for the common soldier on the front line where any notions of glory and national destiny were soon blasted away by the dehumanizing horror of modern warfare.

Remarque has an extraordinary power of describing fear: the appalling tension of being holed up in a dugout under heavy bombardment; the animal instinct to kill or be killed which takes over during hand-to-hand combat. He also has an eye for the grimly comic: the consignment of coffins Paul and his friends pass as they make their way up the line for a new offensive; the young soldiers joyfully tucking into double rations when half their company are unexpectedly wiped out.

Remarque's elegy for a sacrificed generation is all the more devastating for the laconic prose in which his teenaged veteran narrates shocking experiences which for him have become the stuff of daily life. Paul cannot imagine a life after the war and can no longer relate to his family when he returns home on leave. Only the camaraderie of his diminishing circle of friends has any meaning for him. He comes especially to depend on an older comrade, Stanislaus Katczinsky, and one of the most poignant moments in the book is when he carries the wounded Kat on his back under fire to the field dressing station, with starkly tragic outcome.

The saddest and most compelling war story ever written.

By: Erich Maria Remarque
Introduction by: Norman Stone
Translated by: Brian Murdoch
Imprint: EVERYMANS LIBRARY
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 210mm, Width: 130mm, Spine: 22mm
Weight: 428g
ISBN: 9781841593869
ISBN 10: 1841593869
Series: Everyman's Library CLASSICS
Pages: 296
Publication Date: 03 December 2018
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Erich Maria Remarque was a German author and veteran of the First World War. He was born 1898 in Osnabr ck, Germany. At the age of 18 he was conscripted into the German army. During his service he was wounded by shrapnel in the left leg, right arm and neck. Following the war he worked as a primary school teacher, and later as a librarian, a journalist and a technical writer. Among Remarque's published novels were All Quiet on the Western Front, The Road Back, Three Comrades and Arch of Triumph. His works were publicly burned by the Nazi German government, and in 1947 he and his first wife became naturalised citizens of the United States. Four years earlier, his sister had been executed at the behest of Hitler's 'People's Court'. Remarque adapted the book Ten Days to Die, about Hitler's final days, as a screenplay, and he also wrote for the stage. His last novel was The Night in Lisbon, published in 1962. During his lifetime Remarque married twice and had love affairs with the actresses Hedy Lamarr, Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo.

Reviews for All Quiet on the Western Front

All Quiet is that rare thing, a work of popular modernism. * Independent * The world has a great writer in Erich Maria Remarque. He is a craftsman of unquestionably first rank, a man who can bend language to his will. Whether he writes of men or of inanimate nature, his touch is sensitive, firm, and sure. * The New York Times Book Review *