Un "sequel that equals" assai più trascurato del ben più noto "Niente di nuovo sul fronte occidentale", inizia direttamente dalle ultime scaramucce tra prussiani e americani per poi catapultare i protagonisti, dei sopravvissuti legati alla compagnia del primo capitolo (Tjaden è l'unico che appare come personaggio in entrambi i romanzi), nella "via del ritorno" verso una Germania umiliata, immiserita, con un'inflazione rampante e la rivoluzione spartachista in corso. Sebbene i boati e le visioni orribili delle trincee siano solo dei ricordi, ritornare alla vita borghese di tutti i giorni sembra difficile per chiunque a discapito della propria classe sociale, la quale aliena ogni senso di cameratismo formatosi attraverso le irripetibili esperienze in trincea. In un clima che inoltre non comprende il trauma dei reduci e li accusa di disfattismo, codardia o bolscevismo a seconda del caso, pur riuscire a sbarcare il lunario o trovare un affetto non sembra portare conforto e ridare un senso a queste esistenze troncate, ma che comunque lottano per rigenerarsi.

Beautifully written.

I read Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front many years ago. I re-read it while travelling through Europe and wanted to read more of his novels. I heard about the Road Back in an article about Kevin Power's brilliant Yellow Birds, a novel about the Gulf War.

There are a lot of novels about the First World War, but very few books about the experience of returning soldiers. The Road Back poignantly captures the difficult task returned soldiers face of reintegrating into society after years of war. Many of the characters in the novel went to war during the later stages of their formative years and know very little of the life outside of the trenches. Moreover, the main character attempts to capture his lost youth by taking a trip to the country but all he can think of is ideal locations for a machine gun placement. He drifts aimlessly and struggles to find a place in society, failing as a school teacher and returning to his parents house.

The society they return to also struggles to accommodate them, even though they have sacrificed so much for the supposed greater good of their country. I've read that this is a problem faced by many of our own returned servicemen from equally futile wars (Iraq and Afghanistan).

In 2014 we will commemorate the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War. I know in my own country, Australia, the senseless slaughter has been replaced with a chest-thumping jingoism. I think this is ultimately dangerous and perhaps these fanatics who 'pilgrimage' to Gallipoli should read Remarque, Graves, Owen, Sassoon, Barbuesse and realise that the there was nothing noble or glorious about the pointless slaughter of the First World War.

Geen 5 * zoals "Van het westelijk front geen nieuws" want daar was ik echt van omver geblazen.
Dit "vervolg" scoort wel een dikke 4, en als je een impressie wil over wat bedoeld wordt met Lost Generation, dit is een excellente kandidaat .

“Искам да размърдам ръцете и мислите си, да не си придавам важност и да вървя напред дори ако понякога ми се прииска да спра… Колко просто е всичко, но колко време ми бе необходимо, за да стигна до него… Днес зная, че всичко в живота вероятно е подготовка и труд на всеки по отделно, в множество клетки, в множество жилки- и както клетките и жилките на дървото трябва само да приемат и предават по-нагоре напиращия сок, така и от този труд навярно ще се роди… свобода.”

Макар и да ми се стори леко неподредена на моменти винаги бих оценила високо всяка книга, която ме разплаква, трогва и променя мъничко.

:)))

Tai ne bus vilčių išsipildymas, apie kurį mes svajojome jaunystėje ir kurio tikėjomės sugrįžę po kelerių fronte praleistų metų. Tai bus kelias kaip ir vis kiti, vietomis akmenuotas, vietomis lygus, su provėžomis, kaimais ir laukais - darbo kelias. Aš būsiu vienas. Gal kokiam ruožui susirasių bendrakeleivį. Visam keliui - turbūt ne. Ir galimas daiktas, kad man ne kartą reikės nusiimti kuprinę, kai pavargs pečiai; ir turbūt ne kartą reikės dvejojančiam sustoti prie kryžkelių ir pasienio užkardų ir kai ką palikti, ne kartą parklupti ir pargriūti. Bet aš vėl pakilsiu, nepasiliksiu gulėti, eisiu toliau ir nepasuksiu atgal. Gal niekada nebegalėsiu būti visiškai laimingas, - turbūt šią galimybę sugriovė karas, - ir visur būsiu šiek tiek prašalietis ir niekur nesijausiu kaip namie, bet turbūt niekada nebūsiu ir visiškai nelaimingas, nes visada bus kas nors, kas mane prilaikys, kad ir mano rankos arba koks medis, arba alsuojanti žemė. 230-231 psl.

PTSD in post-WWI Germany, the sequel to All Quiet on the Western Front. Episodic, not always linear, first-person narrator although it sometimes feels more like a close third, or even a sort of omniscient first-person when, thanks to Ernst's deep connection with his troubled former comrades, scenes are dramatized that the narrator couldn't know about (friend returning to the trenches alone at night and then shooting himself; how a room feels after another friend cuts open an artery and bleeds out). Teenagers taught to fight and survive, to kill and make it through, dreaming of home and returning alive, holding-up their return as their hope, have trouble reacclimating of course when they finally return and sit with loved ones and see the familiar landscape of their youth as a potential battlefield, have no patience for "fine phrases" about heroism or The Fatherland or anything along those lines, find their studies total bullshit, can't sit in a classroom and teach penmanship to 7 to 10 year olds when the horror they've experienced, the sense of betrayal, solely occupies their mind -- each of a handful of comrades not-so-deeply characterized (stage II case of disembodied proper noun syndrome) try to make their way back to a semblance of sustainable existence, some sort of coming to terms (Ernst ultimately finds a sort of peace via mindful/mystical communion with nature, lying down in the grass alone, just looking, listening, being), some not at all.

Lacks the drive and blatant high stakes of the other EMR novels I've read (I'm on a completist quest, FYI, and have five or six others on a shelf in order of publication ready to go this year). Almost started skimming midway but right when I started to think three-stars could devolve to two it picked-up and ended tremendously. As always with EMR, what's triggered completism, there are moments of extreme vividness, up there with Prince Andrei on his back looking at blue sky, Proust's elevating airplane, Leopold Bloom's kidney sliding in his frying pan, Bartlebooth's watercolors returning to the ocean, etc: in this, it's a war veteran sheep dog named Wolf fighting with the farmer's bulldog Pluto and then later doing what he's been bred to do, excelling at herding sheep although he was raised on the battlefield (Wolf's road back is hard-wired); or when the comrades run to the square with their "faces of the trench" as the military led by a former comrade threatens to turn a machine gun on a crowd of labor protestors led by a former Jewish comrade; or a scene at an official military-sanctioned brothel when Ernst the narrator loses his virginity; the classroom scene when the young veteran students revolt against the principal's fine phrases of heroism and again at the end the courtroom scene when the comrades rise up against the judge and lawyer in defense of their friend's murder of a man who'd been macking on a woman who'd been his only beacon through it all.

Was worried about this one and a little disappointed until page 180 or so but from now on I'll be completely confident that EMR will deliver. He was dramatizing boredom and dissatisfaction, which always makes what follows all the better, although in this it felt like it went on a few dozen pages too long and wasn't sufficiently concentrated?

But generally this is another great EMR novel -- since it's about PTSD (well before the term was coined), it lacks the sense that death could visit with every turned page, but a worthwhile way to spend two long sittings today at jury duty. Always stretches of top-notch translated prose, although in this the translation, especially in dialogue, occasionally seemed wonky thanks most likely to old German slang rendered as old British slang. Also interesting in that it was published in 1931, so before the rise of the forces that would wreck everything hundreds of times over in a decade or so (no lessons in this learned at all) -- those young students of Ernst's would grow up to be in their 30s during WWII and the teens at the end gleefully performing military exercises and calling WWI veterans cowards and traitors to The Fatherland foreshadow what's to come. Hunger and inflation are only touched on.

Generally, I think I'm interested in this era for reasons related to rising fascism worldwide and Trumpism, seeing our own times through the perspective of 80-100 years ago in Europe, the general sense of HEFT that runs through these novels that always elevates the prose (translated German is probably my favorite flavor in the English language), but also because I'm searching for Bolano's sources for the Hans Reiter section in 2666.

Here's a quotation representative of theme and translation (although the language in this bit is a little elevated since Ernst is waxing significantly) from right before he decides he can't be a schoolteacher:

"What am I able to teach you then? Should I tell you how to pull the string on a hand grenade, how best to throw it at a human being? . . . Should I mimic how a man with a stomach wound will groan, how one with a lung wound gurgles and one with a head wound whistles? More I do not know. More I have not learned.

Should I take you to the brown-and-green map there, move my finger across it and tell you that here love was murdered? Should I explain to you that the books you hold in your hands are but nets with which men design to snare your simple souls, to entangle you in the undergrowth of fine phrases, and in the barbed wire of falsified ideas?

I stand here before you, a polluted, a guilty man and can only implore you ever to remain as you are, never to suffer the bright light of your childhood to be misused as a blow flame of hate. About your brows still blows the breath of innocence. How then should I presume to teach you? Behind me, still pursuing, are the bloody years. -- How then can I venture among you? Must I not first become a man again myself?"

I will start by stating that this is my favorite book by my favorite author Remarque. I read All Quiet on the Western Front when I was 13 and loved it so I began to delve into Remarque's less famous works. The first of these was The Road Back.

The Road Back tells the story of the remains of Paul's unit from All Quiet on the Western Front. That said it is not really a sequel to the much more well known work. It begins with the final days of WWI and how the soldiers all make their way home and try to rebuild their lives. The story covers the armistice, the march back to Germany, homecoming, and the revolts that rocked postwar Germany.

Remarque's style reaches its forte in this wonderful masterpiece that engages the reader. He tells of joy and sorrow, gloom and hope. At times the book is depressing but in the next scene hilarious.

All in all this is a great book by a great author, and the only book by Remarque that I have read that has something approaching a "happy" ending

4+

Amazing and moving book about German soldiers who return from the battlefield after World War I and have to take up civilian life again with all the problems that involves.

Remarque wrote this book 100 years ago, but unfortunately it is still relevant today, unfortunately it is relevant for all ages. Our society does not learn from its mistakes, refuses to change and develop in the right direction, we follow the same path over and over again. We follow educated ideas and thereby destroy our present and lose our future. The book is shocking and painful, and I consider it Remarque's best work.

"The Road Back" is a sequel to "All Quiet on the Western Front." I listened to the audiobook version available on hoopla.

As the title suggests, this novel is about a group of young men who survived ww1 and are trying to figure out how to best live their lives in the aftermath. Their stories weave together to paint an incredibly detailed and tragic picture of post war Germany.

This book is incredibly bittersweet and moving. You do not have to read "All Quiet" to understand this novel.