Considered by many the greatest war novel of all time All Quiet on the Western Front is Erich
Maria Remarque's masterpiece of the German experience during World War I. I am young I am
twenty years old yet I know nothing of life but despair death fear and fatuous
superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. . . . This is the testament of Paul Bäumer who
enlists with his classmates in the German army during World War I. They become soldiers with
youthful enthusiasm. But the world of duty culture and progress they had been taught breaks
in pieces under the first bombardment in the trenches. Through years of vivid horror Paul
holds fast to a single vow: to fight against the principle of hate that meaninglessly pits
young men of the same generation but different uniforms against one another . . . if only he
can come out of the war alive. 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
