Centennial Editions
Centennial Editions celebrate our legacy: books we discovered early, believed in deeply, and still stand by. Read them, re-read them, collect them.
A 1929 selection.
Centennial Editions
All Quiet on the Western Front
by Erich Maria Remarque; translated by A. W. Wheen
About the author
Erich Maria Remarque was a German author and World War I veteran. Born in 1898 in Osnabrück, Germany, Remarque was conscripted into the German army at the age of eighteen. After the war he worked as a librarian, journalist, and teacher. Among his novels were All Quiet on the Western Front, Arch of Triumph, The Road Back, and Three Comrades. In 1947 he and his first wife, Ilse, became naturalized citizens of the United States. He died in 1970 in Locarno, Switzerland.
Cultural history: 1929 to now
U.S. National Archives, 1933.
Ten years after the end of the First World War, All Quiet on the Western Front told the story of a generation shaped by combat. Written by a former German soldier, it was translated into English a year later and quickly became an international bestseller.
In the 1930s, it was one of the first books publicly burned by the Nazi government, who condemned it as unpatriotic. In danger of execution, author Erich Maria Remarque went into exile abroad and never returned to his home country.
All Quiet on the Western Front pioneered a new type of war novel, telling the story of a common soldier in mundane, brutal detail. Unflinchingly realistic, it ushered in a century of war writing that refused to romanticize the experience of combat.
Today, it remains a staple of school reading lists in history and literature, cementing its status as a classic of the anti-war genre.
All Quiet on the Western Front was first adapted to film in 1930, winning Best Picture and Best Director at the 3rd Academy Awards. Screenings of the film in Germany were attacked by Nazi brownshirts, who set off stink bombs and released live mice in theaters.
In 2022, the book was filmed in Germany for the first time. This critically approved production received nine Oscar nominations and introduced the book to a new generation of film-goers.
Synopsis
Here at last is the great war novel for which the world has been waiting. Herr Remarque speaks for a whole generation—that generation of all the combatant nations whose life was destroyed in its springtime—even if it escaped actual death. In his book we see the life of the common soldier in all its phases—in the trenches, behind the lines, in hospital, at home on leave among civilians. It is a boo...
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Centennial Editions
