Reading Order
All Quiet on the Western Front Reading Order
Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front (1929) is a complete standalone novel. It is narrated by Paul Bäumer, a nineteen-year-old German soldier on the Western Front during World War One, who enlists with his classmates after being urged by their schoolteacher and finds not glory but systematic dehumanization and death. Published the same year as A Farewell to Arms, it is the definitive literary account of the Great War from the German side and one of the most widely read anti-war novels ever written.
Where to start
All Quiet on the Western Front
Complete All Quiet on the Western Front Book List
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All Quiet on the Western Front
Erich Maria Remarque·1929·Standalone — Paul Bäumer and his classmates on the German Western Front; the canonical anti-war novel; originally written in German, published simultaneously with A Farewell to Arms in 1929 - Buy
The Road Back
OptionalErich Maria Remarque·1931·Remarque's direct sequel — the surviving soldiers return to Germany after the Armistice and try to rebuild lives the war has made impossible; not as formally perfect as All Quiet but the essential companion - Buy
Three Comrades
OptionalErich Maria Remarque·1936·Remarque's third novel in this world — three veterans in Weimar Germany during the early 1930s as the Nazi movement rises; a love story and a portrait of a society destroying itself
All Quiet on the Western Front — Frequently Asked Questions
Is All Quiet on the Western Front a standalone?
All Quiet on the Western Front is self-contained, though Remarque wrote a direct sequel, The Road Back (1931), which follows the surviving soldiers back to Germany after the Armistice. The sequel is less widely read than the original; All Quiet is fully satisfying as a standalone.
Is All Quiet on the Western Front based on a true story?
All Quiet on the Western Front is fiction, but Remarque served as a German soldier on the Western Front from 1916 until he was wounded in 1917 and invalided out. The novel is informed by his experience but is not directly autobiographical: Paul Bäumer is not Remarque, and the specific events of the novel are invented.
Why was All Quiet on the Western Front banned?
All Quiet on the Western Front was burned by the Nazis at their famous book burning of May 1933. The Nazis saw the novel as defeatist and an insult to German soldiers. Remarque was stripped of his German citizenship in 1938 and lived in exile in Switzerland and the United States. His sister, Elfriede Scholz, was executed by the Nazis in 1943 partly in retaliation for his anti-Nazi writing.
What is the film adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front?
All Quiet on the Western Front has been adapted three times: a celebrated 1930 American film directed by Lewis Milestone that won the Academy Award for Best Picture; a 1979 American television film; and a German-language Netflix film in 2022 directed by Edward Berger, which won four Academy Awards including Best International Feature Film. The 2022 film takes significant liberties with the novel's ending but is widely regarded as the most visually powerful of the three.
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