The Atlantic Bookshelf: A Guide to Good Books

ERICH MARIA REMARQUE is still in his early thirties. Too young to be called at the outbreak of the war, he saw action with the infantry on the Western Front during the latter half of the struggle. He was eventually wounded and sent home with his hands half paralyzed and Ins leg in a brace. Fresh from school at his enlistment, Remarque had no profession awaiting his convalescence, His mother had died; wounds made his music, which he loved, impossible; so he served variously as schoolmaster, peddler, mechanic, then journalist in the employ of the Scherl Press in Berlin. He wrote on the side, with little success. Suffering from attacks of despair, he began a systematic purging of his mind by writing down those war experiences which were so clearly the cause of his depression. This was continued for six weeks, every evening on his return from the office, by the end of which time All Quiet on the Western Front had been completed. The Schorl editors refused the manuscript. When it was accepted by the Ullstein Press, a liberal, pacifist house, Remarque was fired from his job.

Back in 1929, Remarque was asking himself what readers will be asking to-day: Could he write a second book as powerful as his first? There is no severer test than that to be applied to his new novel, which is now issued by thirty-one different publishers throughout the world.