All Quiet on the Western Front
Erich Maria Remarque 1929
A young German soldier narrates this novel about life on the Western Front during World War I. During leave, Paul Bäumer finds that home has become a place where he no longer belongs.
234 pages 4h 32m reading time
- One of the most widely read novels about war ever written, and the best-known book about World War I.
- Argues that modern war destroys young soldiers even when they survive it, cutting them off from their past, their families, and any normal future.
- Shows the enemy as ordinary people much like the narrator, suggesting that the men in the trenches have no real quarrel with each other.
- Its 1930 Hollywood film version won the Academy Award for Best Picture and became a classic of anti-war cinema, followed by later screen versions, including a 2022 German film that won four Oscars.
- Shaped how later generations picture World War I, turning the image of a "lost generation" of young soldiers into a common way of remembering the war.
Burned by the Nazis
After Hitler took power in 1933, the Nazis banned the novel and burned copies in public bonfires.
Drawn from real service
Remarque was drafted at eighteen and was wounded by shell fragments on the Western Front in 1917.
Written in a few weeks
Remarque reportedly wrote the novel in about six weeks, a decade after the war ended.
Huge first success
First printed in parts in a Berlin newspaper, it sold over a million copies in Germany within a year.
Translated from German by A. W. Wheen