The sequel to the masterpiece All Quiet on the Western Front, The Road Back is a classic novel of the slow return of peace to Europe in the years following World War I.After four grueling years, the Great War has finally ended. Now Ernst and the few men left from his company cannot help wondering what will become of them. The town they departed as eager young men seems colder, their homes … colder, their homes smaller, the reasons their comrades had to die even more inexplicable.
For Ernst and his friends, the road back to peace is more treacherous than they ever imagined. Suffering food shortages, political unrest, and a broken heart, Ernst undergoes a crisis that teaches him what there is to live for—and what he has that no one can ever take away.
“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
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The Road Back is a remarkable novel by one of the greatest novelists of the 20th century. It has the authenticity and often brutal insight of a man who had personally endured and survived the mechanised slaughter of the First World War. The novel describes the adjustments, frustrations and struggles the veterans of that war experienced as they attempted to reintegrate themselves into post-war German society. There is a strong sense of comradeship amongst the men he writes about. A thread throughout the novels is that although the soldiers can understand civilian life, the civilian population cannot comprehend what the survivors and slain had suffered in the trenches, and are ungrateful and indifferent towards them. There is an element of resentment that the sacrifices made had been in vain and that, after the war had ended, the soldiers who had fought it had been abandoned. Remarque includes a variety of characters, each with their own priorities and burdens. For instance, one soldier prioritises the luxury of food and courts a butcher’s daughter, another still regards the men he has killed as trophies that he still maintains a proud tally of, still unable to see the enemies he has shot as men like himself, whilst one of the officers seeks out an old battlefield and despairingly communes with the phantoms whose brief lives ended senselessly in the trenches. There are many very poignant moments and Remarque gives the reader a very vivid impression of the many ways the First World War ruined a generation, both during the conflict and in the years that followed it.
A very good novel about the trials of a German soldier trying to reintegrate into normal life after WW1. A very emotional story, from the famous author of All Quiet on the Western Front, that has the unmistakable ring of truth about the perils of war long after the battles have ended.
An incredibly touching and tragic follow-up to the most remarkable anti-war novel “All Quiet on the Western Front,” “The Road Back” is a must-read for everyone who enjoys great literature and history combined. The plot follows Ernst and his comrades who, after the Great War is over, find themselves restless and abandoned by their own country and compatriots. The armistice has just been signed, yet for them, the road back to civilian life will be long and difficult, and not everyone will be able to adapt. The signs of PTSD, turmoil surrounding them, political unrest, and the new life that they simply can’t comprehend any longer – all this is brilliantly delivered through Remarque’s beautiful prose and memorable characters. Certain scenes will move you to tears while some will cause rightful indignation as the first paramilitary units – future SS and Hitlerjugend squads – begin to rear their ugly heads. “My God, Willy… here we are alive still and only just out of it – how, in God’s name, is it possible there should already be such people to do that sort of thing?” (P. 310 paperback edition) Brutally honest and impossibly lyrical, this novel is a deserving sequel to an immortal classic, “All Quiet on the Western Front.”