All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
Any literary minded combat veteran returning from war with a memoir, or a novel, will be compared with the author of All Quiet on the Western Front. The 1929 novel was written by a frontline soldier from World War I, Germany’s Erich Maria Remarque, and although crafted as fiction, the horror of reality rattles every sentence. Nearly a century on, it stands as a model for how to represent the madness and carnage.
All Quiet on the Western Front’s new edition is part of a zeitgeist of fresh translations, stripping away the often needlessly fussy English of early 20th century translators to get at the sense and sound of the original. Thoughtfully rendered by Kurt Beals, All Quiet is cinematically vivid; Remarque wrote in first person present tense, thrusting readers into each moment. Like Apocalypse Now, All Quiet catches the craziness and the boredom, and like Platoon, the realization that abstract reasons for war matter little when under fire. It’s about survival—you and your buddies.
Get All Quiet on the Western Front at Amazon here.
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