Erich Maria Remarque - All Quiet on the Western Front & other works (16 books)

* Erich Maria Remarque - All Quiet on the Western Front & other works (16 books)

ERICH MARIA REMARQUE (1898 – 1970) was a German-born novelist whose landmark 1929 novel ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT , based on his experience in the Imperial German Army during World War I, became an international bestseller and perhaps the best-known and most representative novel dealing with the conflict.

The novel describes the German soldiers' extreme physical and mental trauma during the war, and the detachment from civilian life felt by many upon returning home from the front. Its title, the language of routine communiqués, is typical of its cool, terse style, which records the daily horrors of war in laconic understatement. Its casual amorality was in shocking contrast to patriotic rhetoric.

With the book's publication, Remarque emerged as an eloquent spokesman for a generation that had been, in his words, "destroyed by war, even though it might have escaped its shells." The realistic depiction of trench warfare from the perspective of young soldiers struck a chord with the war's survivors — soldiers and civilians alike — and provoked strong reactions, both positive and negative, around the world. Remarque's harshest critics were his countrymen, many of whom felt the book denigrated the German war effort, and that Remarque had exaggerated the horrors of war to further his pacifist agenda. The book and its sequel, THE ROAD BACK (1930), dealing with the collapse of Germany in 1918, were among the books banned and burned in Nazi Germany.

Two English translations are included here, by Arthur Wheen (1929) and Brian Murdoch (1993). The latter explains how, due to the time it was published, Wheen's translation was obliged to Anglicise some lesser-known German references and lessen the impact of certain passages, while omitting others entirely. Murdoch's translation is more accurate to the original text and completely unexpurgated.

Riding on the wave of All Quiet's success, a number of similar works followed from Remarque. In simple, emotive language, they described wartime and the postwar years in Germany. THREE COMRADES (1936) spans the years of the Weimar Republic, from the hyperinflation of 1923 to the end of the decade. The novel ARCH OF TRIUMPH (1945) became another instant bestseller, reaching worldwide sales of nearly five million.


The following books are in ePUB format unless otherwise noted:

== NOVELS ==

* A Time to Love and a Time to Die [tr. Lindley] (Random House, 2014)
* All Quiet on the Western Front [tr. Murdoch] (Vintage UK, 1994)
* All Quiet on the Western Front [tr. Wheen] (Random House, 2013)
* Arch of Triumph [tr. Sorell & Lindley] (Random House, 2014)
* The Black Obelisk [tr. Lindley] (Random House, 2013)
* Flotsam [tr. Lindley] (Random House, 2013)
* Heaven Has No Favorites [tr. Winston] (Random House, 2014)
* The Night in Lisbon [tr. Manheim] (Random House, 2014)
* The Promised Land [tr. Hofmann] (Vintage UK, 2017) – PDF
* The Road Back [tr. Wheen] (Random House, 2013)
* Shadows in Paradise [tr. Manheim] (Random House, 2014)
* Spark of Life [tr. Stern] (Random House, 2014)
* The Way Back [tr. Murdoch] (Vintage UK, 2019)
* Three Comrades [tr. Wheen] (Random House, 2013)

== SHORT STORIES ==

* Eight Stories: Tales of War and Loss (Washington Mews, 2018)

== PLAYS ==

* Full Circle [adapted by Peter Stone] (HBJ, 1974) – PDF


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