Read this when
All Quiet on the Western Front
He came home on leave and his own bedroom felt like a stranger's. 🪖 Remarque wrote down what so many veterans still can't say out loud.
Who it's for
Paul Bäumer's first-person voice puts words to things many veterans and trauma survivors struggle to say: the numbness that protects you at the front, the guilt of killing, the loyalty to comrades that eclipses everything else, and the way home becomes strange.
Feelings it meets
What it is
Erich Maria Remarque's semi-autobiographical novel about German soldiers in the First World War, published in 1928-29. It is narrated by Paul Bäumer, a young soldier who enlisted with his classmates after patriotic speeches by their schoolmaster, Kantorek. Paul describes the hunger, shelling and constant death of trench warfare and the bond between the men in his unit.
Where to find it
Public domain in the US (German original and A. W. Wheen's 1929 translation). Free on Project Gutenberg and Standard Ebooks (Wheen translation). Also widely in print, in libraries and as an audiobook.
Before you start
Heads up: Graphic war violence and death.
Age: Ages 14+
But believe me, my dear boy, there is nothing stronger than those two: patience and time, they will do it all.Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, Chapter XVI (tr. Louise and Aylmer Maude)
