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The Road Back

A Novel

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The Road Back

Written by: Erich Maria Remarque, A.W. Wheen - Translator
Narrated by: Graham Halstead
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The sequel to the masterpiece All Quiet on the Western Front, The Road Back is a classic novel of the slow return of peace to Europe in the years following World War I. 

After four grueling years, the Great War has finally ended. Now Ernst and the few men left from his company cannot help wondering what will become of them. The town they departed as eager young men seems colder, their homes smaller, the reasons their comrades had to die even more inexplicable. For Ernst and his friends, the road back to peace is more treacherous than they ever imagined. Suffering food shortages, political unrest, and a broken heart, Ernst undergoes a crisis that teaches him what there is to live for - and what he has that no one can ever take away.

©1958 Erich Maria Remarque (P)2018 Recorded Books Classics Fiction Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction Heartfelt War Military
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What the critics say

"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)
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It was a very good book that this time deals with PTSD or "shell shock" as it was likely called then and how the German soldiers dealt with return to civilian life after losing WWI. More maddening than heart breaking this time, but very powerful and well worth the experience. The narrator wasn't as powerful as Frank Muller from the first novel, but Graham does a good job.

Suitable sequel to All Quiet on the Western Front

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In high school all my friends read All Quiet on the Western Front. I was in an advanced English class so I didn’t get to read it, and was slightly jealous of their rave reviews. So my BFF pinched a copy of it from her classroom, and I forgot to give it back when I was done reading it. I still have the broken spined, dog-earred copy on my bookshelf today, lovingly tucked between my other favourite books.

I decided to listen to it again on Audible, only to discover that there was essentially a sequel to AQotWF!!!

Erich Maria Remarque’s stunning command of language and the way he effortlessly weaves you through his stories make life leap from the page and into reality. Again, he has moved me to tears. Such rawness, such ugliness, such detachment. It is stark, unflinching and unapologetic. This is what war looked like over 100 years ago, and it essentially looks the same today, except we have better clinical words to describe the pain of the soldiers.

I’m sure some innuendo was lost in translation, but the stories Remarque tells are nothing short of brilliant. He should be listed among the greats and the classics.

Poetic

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