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The novel that has done more than any other to inspire opposition to war, in a major new translation that captures its undiminished literary power for a new generation With a Foreword by Samantha Power, the Pulitzer Prize–winning, A Penguin Classics Hardcover Galvanized by youthful idealism and patriotic fervor, eighteen-year-old Paul Bäumer and his schoolmates enlist in the German army at the onset of World War I, but their dreams of heroism shatter beneath the first shells of the bombardment. What they find on the front is not the glorious battle they were promised but a slaughter, and their everyday struggle becomes one not for their country but for their survival. Paul and his fellow soldiers form close bonds, but even their companionship is not enough of a shield when the next shell strikes.
About the author
Erich Maria Remarque (1898-1970) wrote his most famous novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, based on his experience as a soldier in the German army in World War I; it became an instant bestseller upon its publication in 1929. When the Nazis came to power in Germany, they burned his books and forced him to flee to the United States; he never returned to the country of his birth. All Quiet on the Western Front has since been translated into more than fifty languages and adapted into three acclaimed movies. It remains one of the most widely read novels of World War I.
Maria Tatar (translator) is the John L. Loeb Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University. She is the author, editor, and translator of many acclaimed books on German culture and folklore. Born in Pressath, Germany, and raised in Illinois, she now lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Samantha Power (foreword) is the author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning book “A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide as well as a human rights activist and a former war correspondent. She served as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, the Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and a member of President Obama’s cabinet, and is a Professor of Practice at the Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Law School.
