Product Description

All Quiet on the Western Front is the most famous anti-war novel ever written

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3423 in Books
• Published on: 2007-11-01
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Synopsis
One by one the boys begin to fall...In 1914, a room full of German schoolboys, fresh-faced and idealistic, are goaded by their schoolmaster to troop off to the 'glorious war'. With the fire and patriotism of youth, they sign up. What follows is the moving story of a young 'unknown soldier' experiencing the horror and disillusionment of life in the trenches.

About the Author
Erich Maria Remarque was born in 1899. He fought and was injured in the trenches in the First World War when he was eighteen years old. He was exiled and his works were burnt by the Nazis. He lived in America and Switzerland and married and divorced his first wife twice before marrying the celebrated Hollywood actress Paulette Goddard. He published several novels after All Quiet on the Western Front, the most famous of which is The Road Back. He died in 1970.

Brian Murdoch was born in 1944. He is Professor of German at Stirling University.

Customer Reviews

Fantastic
I am one of these people who always wanted to read a great classic and enjoy it.

Unfortunately what usually happens is that I never finish a book of this type because it is too much like hard work and I go back to something less challenging.

Not so with this book. It grabbed me immediately and I lapped up every page. The author succeeded in bringing across difficult emotional subjects in an effortless way and I would thoroughly recommend it to everyone.

Exposes well the despair and hopelessness of trench warfare
Very tragic and horrific account of the lives of a group of German ex-classmate soldiers in the trenches of WWI. The novel brings across well the hopelessness and futility of it all, especially at the very end of the story. Most of the time the story could be about the experiences of any group of WWI soldiers from any country as there are relatively few specifically German reference points apart from the characters' names. The writing is in the present tense, which I usually find annoying and did so to some extent here, but it does bring across the drama of the action very vividly. The language is very simple and the book was a quick read despite its nearly 300 pages.

The last enemy ...
Erich Marie Remarque was a truly great writer of his generation. Imagine how fresh this novel was when first published - imagine reading it in the original German language. Notwithstanding the many decades that have passed it remains a masterpiece. I first read 'All Quiet' in the 1960's.
I promise you, it changed my life forever. Few books in my nearly six decades of reading have done that.