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All Quiet on the Western Front/The Road Back #2

The Road Back

erich maria remarque

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After surviving several horrifying years in the inferno of the Western Front, a young German soldier and his cohorts return home at the end of WW1. Their road back to life in civilian world is made arduous by their bitterness about what they find in post-war society. A captivating story, one of Remarque's best.

352 pages, Paperback

First published April 1,1931
Series
All Quiet on the Western Front/The Road Back

This edition

Format
352 pages, Paperback
Published
December 1, 2001 by Simon Publications
ISBN
9781931541749
ASIN
1931541744
Language
English

More editions

About the author

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erich maria remarque

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Experiences of German-born American writer Erich Maria Remarque (born Erich Paul Remark) in World War I based All Quiet on the Western Front (1929), his best known novel.

People most widely read literature of author with pen name of Erich Paul Remark in the twentieth century.

German history of the twentieth century essentially marks biography of Remarque and fundamentally influences his writing: Childhood and youth, the Weimar Republic, and most of all his exile in Switzerland and the United States. The first publication attained worldwide recognition, continuing today.

Examples of his other novels also internationally published are: The Road Back (1931), Three Comrades (1936, 38), Arch of Triumph (1945), The Black Obelisk (1956), and Night in Lisbon (1962).

Remarque's novels have been translated in more than fifty languages; globally the total edition comes up to several million copies.

The complete works of Remarque are both highly interrelated with his Osnabrück background and speaking thematically of a critical examination of German history, whereby the preservation of human dignity and humanity in times of oppression, terror and war always was at the forefront of his literary creation.

AKA:
Έριχ Μαρία Ρεμάρκ (Greek)
Эрих Мария Ремарк (Russian)

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Community Reviews

Rating(4 / 5.0, 100 votes)
5 stars
33(33%)
4 stars
29(29%)
3 stars
38(38%)
2 stars
0(0%)
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100 reviews All reviews
Profile Image for Kimberly .
uZuMaKioBaRuTo
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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Dopo il folgorante esordio di “Niente di Nuovo sul Fronte Occidentale” che fece conoscere al mondo le qualità letterarie e la spiccata vena antimilitarista del giovane Erich Maria Remarque [1898-1970], l’autore proseguì la sua attività di scrittore pubblicando questo “La Via del Ritorno” un romanzo che ha come protagonisti giovani tedeschi colti nel passaggio tra il "cessate il fuoco" della I Guerra Mondiale e il loro difficile reinserimento nella vita quotidiana e sociale di una Germania appena uscita sconfitta e sull’orlo di una crisi economico-politica. Lo sbandamento individuale e collettivo di questi ragazzi di uno stesso plotone che per anni hanno vissuto come fratelli la guerra, le battaglie, il pericolo quotidiano di morire o di rimanere feriti e mutilati è il fulcro principale di quest’opera che emoziona e angoscia e colpisce profondamente chi la legge anche e soprattutto per i toni misurati dell’autore che risulta così quanto mai efficace e incisiva, echeggiando a lungo nell’animo dopo la fine della lettura.
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TheJrdzone
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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W twórczości Remarque’a jest coś, co z każdą jego kolejną książką, po którą sięgam, we mnie dojrzewa i za każdym kolejnym razem wywołuje większe zdumienie i podziw.
(4.5)
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Bl4ckEnvy
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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This has to be the most underrated book I have ever read. This is a masterpiece and I cannot understand why it flies under everyone’s radar. Every single page was gut wrenching. It’s nearly 100 years old but still not outdated. It is still such an important piece of literature and in my opinion should be required to read. Remarque is becoming one of my favorite authors. There’s no one like him. An masterpiece.
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ThisAgio
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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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.
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Zrisha
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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An enervating and emotional account of how a group of German soldiers who served on the Western front lines during World War I come home and have to adapt themselves to a new life.

The interesting aspect that Ludwich Birkholtz (the protagonist) and his comrades all joined the army in their last year in high school. When they come back, some years later, they all are faced with existential questions and deep trauma. The choices they make (or don't make) have important implications for their further life.

With pretty straightforward prose Erich Maria Remarque is able to set out for us, readers, how this time period worked on the people involved. How they all had their own destinies - some killing themselves, others ending up in the loony bin, still others becoming successful businessmen - and how each had to transcend himself to overcome their former life in the trenches.

A really underappreciated work by Remarque which is sort of strange since The Way Back is the sequel to his infamous All Quiet on the Western Front. Having read both of them consecutively, I can definitely recommend both books, but recommend The Way Back as the more interesting and fulfilling of both works. Also, this latter book deals with themes that are seldom treated in war books, while the first one is pretty basic with regard to its treatment of front line events.

Read it!
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Nekkro
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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Отрежњујуће.

"Повратак" је својеврсни наставак најбољег (анти-)ратног романа "На Западу ништа ново" и у њему се показује девастирајући учинак рата на преживеле војнике, али и на цело друштво.

Младићи који су практично као деца из школских клупа отишли у рат, глава испуњених високопарним идеалима погибије за отаџбину, из њега се враћају (они који су имали срећу да се врате!) као цинични, резигнирани, огрубели мушкарци, који су искусили све одвратности те бесмислене кланице и грубости ратног живота. Ж��вот у рату је сведен на основне инстинкте, размишља се чопоративно, нагони су ти који управљају понашањем.
Када се све то заврши, повратак у "цивилни живот" нимало неће бити једноставан. Навикнути на ратне околности, очекујући да ће се њихово ратовање "за отаџбину" вредновати, суочиће се са тим да су црноберзијанци и мешетари из позадине сада најугледнији чланови друштва.
Нема ту више места за херојске речи, идеали су изневерени, никога више није брига за ратнике-повратнике (изузев на речима) и то ће за многе од њих бити болно отрежњујуће, често их водећи ка менталним поремећајима (данас се то зове ПТСП).
У том смислу, апсолутно је ремек-дело сцена у којој директор барокним говором дочекује своје преживеле ученике. Одговор једног од војника/ученика саже��е сав презир и резигнацију (додуше, не баш пристојном реченицом, али врло ефектно).

Дирљиво је видети и њихов сусрет са породицама које их још увек сматрају пристојном децом, примерним ученицима, који не говоре "ружне речи". Јаз који је настао, нико више неће моћи да премости.

Све је ово написано врло живо, опипљиво, види се да је Ремарк ово морао дубоко проживети.

Да се ја питам, ово би се читало у средњој школи, упоредо са учењем о "херојским" историјским подвизима и биткама. Можда би се нека млада врућа глава отрезнила.
Штета је само што то никада неће бити популарно.
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ssiasme
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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The last combats and skirmishes… Peace is nearing… However death still keeps doing its dire work… And the dread doesn’t let go.
“Gas shells!” shouts Willy, springing up.
We are all awake now and listening intently.
Wessling points into the air. “There they are! Wild geese!”
Moving darkly against the drab grey of the clouds is a streak, a wedge, its point steering toward the moon. It cuts across its red disc. The black shadows are plainly visible, an angle of many wings, a column of squalling, strange, wild cries, that loses itself in the distance.
“Off they go,” growls Willy. “Damn it all – if only we could pull out like that! Two wings and away.”

The war is over and the road back home lies ahead… For those who have managed to deceive death and survive.
The wide, grey square is much too big for us. Across it sweeps a bleak November wind smelling of decay and death. We are lined up between the canteen and the guard-room, more space we do not require. The wide, empty square about us wakes woeful memories. There, rank on rank, invisible, stand the dead.

The war is over but its echo is long and sorrowful: horrendous memories, nightmares, madness, nervous breakdowns, psychological traumas, suicides, alienation…
The things here are stronger – the things that differentiate us from one another are too powerful. The common interest is no longer decisive. It has broken up already, and given place to the interest of the individual. Now and then something still will shine through from that other time when we all wore the same rig, but already it is diminished and dim. These others here are still our comrades, and yet our comrades no longer – that is what is so sad. All else went west in the war, but comradeship we did believe, in; now only to find that what death could not do, life is achieving – it is driving us asunder.

The gory wave of war retreats and on the shore of peace crippled bodies, crippled minds, crippled souls and ruined fates are left… And generals are already readying new wars…
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