The Road Back: A Novel

Written by Erich Maria Remarque

Narrated by Graham Halstead

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. "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

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 30, 2018
• ISBN: 9781980015383

Erich Maria Remarque

Erich Maria Remarque was born Erich Paul Remark on June 22, 1898. A writer from an early age, he was conscripted into the German army and fought with the 15th Reserve Infantry Regiment on the Western Front during World War I until he was injured by shell shrapnel and transported to an army hospital to recover. from his injuries. Following the war, Remarque published his first novels under his given name - The Dream Room (Die Traumbude) and Station at the Horizon (Station am Horizont) - before embarking on his most famous work, All Quiet on the Western Front (Im Westen nichts Neues). In publishing this last work, he changed his name, adding the middle name "Maria" to honor his mother and changing the spelling of his last name to reflect his French heritage and to distinguish himself from his earlier works. All Quiet on the Western Front became an international sensation and was translated into dozens of languages, catapulting Remarque into literary fame. The book essentially invented a new genre of writing, where veterans would write about their experiences in war, and Remarque - and after publishing his next book, The Road Back (Der Weg zurück), about the recovery from the war in Germany, used the immense proceeds from his books to buy a villa in Ronco, Switzerland. Remarque's life in Germany became imperiled with he rise of the Nazis and soon, his works were deemed "unpatriotic" and banned throughout Germany. After fleeing the country with his wife, his citizenship was revoked and the Nazi propaganda ministry began spreading lies about Remarque, including the falsehood that he had never served in World War I. Remarque eventually became a United States citizen. Remarque continued to write for the rest of his life, publishing such notable works as Spark of Life, Heaven Has No Favorites and The Night in Lisbon, but none would approach the success of All Quiet on the Western Front. Remarque died of heart failure at the age of 72 in Locarno, Switzerland on September 25, 1970.

Reviews for The Road Back

[andre · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

As All Quiet on the Western Front.
Amazing read.

[sheila1957 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The war is over and the soldiers go home. What they find there is not what they spent four years dreaming about. When they get home there is protest all over Germany. Those who did not serve are giving lofty speeches about what the soldiers did on the battlefield to the returning soldiers who knew what happened. Ernst and several of the others go back to school to finish their educations but they have a hard time with it. They are too battle weary and too emotionally scarred to fit in to civilian life. Some go back to their "aristocratic" lifestyle and forget the camaraderie of the Front. Others try to get back their old lives but have changed too much to understand those who stayed home. Others try but cannot fit in. Some have breakdowns; others commit suicide. Those who were not in battle have no understanding what these men have gone through. Ernst tells it like it is and Ludwig does also. None who came home alive escaped unscarred. This sequel to All Quiet on the Western Front shows what is like for those coming back and the disrespect given to them, especially if on the losing side. A generation was lost. No one cares but these men whose lives were stolen and broken. This is a book that should be taught in school so that those who will be called to serve in future wars know that it is not glory and victory that come from war but loss--of self, of friends, of home, of life. Was it worth it? Ludwig was right. It was not.

[rajivc_18 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book is a sequel of sorts, to All Quiet On The Western Front. It starts with the "Band of Brothers" making their way back after the war. The sound of silence is new to them. On the way, they meet a band of American soldiers, with whom they exchange souvenirs for food. They wonder - why did we want to kill them?From there, Erich Maria Remarque takes you on the long road, back to their homes, where they try to integrate back into society. War is cruel. There is no redemption for the survivors, and those were the days when the stress faced by the soldier was not well appreciated. The stories, slow as they are, are powerful and can shake you. In the days of old, kings and generals would be in the thick of war. In today's times, leaders hide behind microphones and in War Rooms. Posturing is rampant. Yet, the horrors of war remain. This book, although written many years back, is relevant today. Very much so.

[hardlyhardy · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

“Heretofore it was only death or wounds or temporary transfers that depleted the company. Now peace must be reckoned with.” — Erich Maria Remarque, “The Road Back”For soldiers returning from war, the road back can be much longer than the journey home. Other novels have made this point, but Erich Maria Remarque's “The Road Back” (1930) ranks as a classic, just as his more famous novel, “All Quiet on the Western Front,” is the classic World War I novel. This novel is a sequel to the other, even though they share few characters in common because so many characters in the earlier novel, including the protagonist, did not survive.Ernst and a few other survivors from his company return to Germany when the war ends and find peace a difficult adjustment. There are no officers to tell them what to do. There are choices to be made again, employment to be sought. Women reenter their lives in confusing ways. How does one sleep in silence? Perhaps most difficult of all, peace separates them even more surely than war did. They are on their own.That a former soldier should miss the good old days of deadly combat seems odd, but Remarque makes it convincing. It's not just the radical change, of course, but also the trauma left by years of constant fear and extreme violence.Insightful passages abound in the novel, as when Ernst sees a lovely scene and observes, "We see no countryside now, only terrain, — terrain for attack and defence. The old mill on the top there is no mill, but a strong point; the wood is no wood, it is artillery cover, — Such things will always creep in."Other passages are just beautifully written, such as this description of a foggy night: "The street lamps have big yellow courtyards of light about them and the people are walking on cotton wool. Shop windows show up to right and left like mysterious fires. Wolf swims up through the fog and dives into it again."For all the novel's pessimism, Remarque ends with a hint of optimism. "Perhaps I shall never be really happy again; perhaps the war has destroyed that, and no doubt I shall always be a little inattentive and nowhere quite at home —- but I shall probably never be wholly unhappy either — for something will always be there to sustain me, be it merely my own hands, or a tree, or the breathing earth."This novel, like “All Quiet on the Western Front,” was banned and burned in Germany under the Nazis. Remarque moved to Switzerland in 1932, wrote a number of other novels and married an American film star, Paulette Goddard. For this war veteran, the road back seems to have been a little easier than it was for his characters.

[gypsysmom_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I read All Quiet on the Western Front by this author last year and I thought it was possibly one of the best books about World War I that I had ever read. This book continues the story of the young German men that survived the war. In its own way it is as moving as All Quiet. The young German boys who enlisted at the behest of their teacher are no longer the callow youths who went to war. They have seen too much, killed too much, experienced too much to ever happily return to ordinary civilian life. They don't know how to be with people who were not soldiers and they can't continue to stay with their mates. Each one of them suffers from what we would now call PTSD. Quite a few have physical disablities. The young men who went to war don't know what to do. Additionally, Germany is faced with rampant inflation and most people can't find work. Some may not survive peace.

[john257hopper · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a sequel to the author's more famous First World War novel All Quiet on the Western Front, about the experiences of a company of German troops in the trenches. In this novel, published a couple of years later in 1931, a mostly different group of soldiers attempt to come to terms with the end of the war and to re-assimilate into civilian life. We often hear of English Tommies that they failed on their return to find a "country fit for heroes", and the same goes for the German soldiers here ("We imagined that people would be waiting for us, expecting us; now we see that already every one is taken up with his own affairs. Life has moved on, is still moving on; it is leaving us behind almost as if we were superfluous already."). They meet incomprehension and an utterly different mindset from those on the Home Front, who can't begin to understand what the soldiers have seen and experienced, the horrors of seeing mates blown up and dying through shrapnel wounds, but also the comradeship, mutual support and sense of a shared mission that dictated the course of their life for four years ("I am quite unable to realize that now I must stay here in the family for good. I still have the feeling that to-morrow, or maybe the next day, but surely sometime, we shall be marching again, side by side, cursing or resigned, but all together."). Many of those at home (but not the soldiers' mothers) see the war as an exciting period for those young men, and the narrative is already becoming a simple heroic one for some young people. The consequences are grim for the soldiers: marriage problems, hallucinations and mental health problems, acts of violence, up to and including killing, and a suicide. All this takes place against the backdrop of the shortlived German Socialist Republic that replaced the Empire for about a year after the war ended, but these soldiers show little interest in politics, concerned with trying to establish a new identity in a world that has become alien to them, and they to it. A powerful read, if not quite up there with its predecessor.

[lostinalibrary · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The Road Back, although less well known than All Quiet on the Western Front, is just as thought-provoking and, in some subtle ways, even more heart-breaking.The story begins during the last few days of WWI. As the final battles surge around them, a group of young German soldiers contemplate what peace will be like and dream of returning home with both hope and fear. They grieve for comrades who will not be returning with them but anticipate the joys of being back with friends and family.When the war finally ends and they head home, they anticipate a hero's welcome but, instead encounter only indifference and misunderstanding. Those who have not gone to war have continued their lives without them and, from their perspective, nothing has changed. It is these young men who have changed and they no longer fit into this world. They had left home as boys, hardly more than children, with all the dreams and joys of youth; they are returning as men, old before their time, damaged both physically and psychically and they cannot understand how the world, their world, can be so different from what they remembered. Their families and friends cannot understand these changes in them - how can they - and so they expect them to behave as they did before. At one point, Ernst, the narrator of the story, swears in front of his mother, something he would never have done before. She is 'pale and horrified' and he tries to explain:" 'Our language was a bit rough out there, mother, I know - Rough but honest...Soldiers are always like that.''Yes, yes, I know,' she protests, 'but you - you too.' "Ernst realizes that, to his mother, the war had meant "only a pack of wild beasts threatening the life of her child...It had never occurred to her that this same threatened child has been just such another wild beast to the children of yet other mothers."All of the young men who have returned with Ernst feel lost. They don't fit in and they are unable to settle down. They suffer from shell-shock and depression. Wives have taken lovers, jobs are already occupied by those who stayed back, and they are no longer respect those who used to have authority over them - school teachers, parents, police. They cannot break the habits they developed to survive in the trenches, they steal to eat even though food is available, they have flash backs, jumping at every loud noise, and they have nightmares. Things which had seemed so important before seem pointless now and there are no new dreams to replace them. One of Ernst's companions reenlists, seeking the companionship they had enjoyed during the war only to discover it no longer exists in a peacetime army, for another, the solution lies in revolution, only to be killed by the same soldiers he once called friends, for some, suicide is the only answer, and for a very few, including Ernst, the answer lies in nature where, finally, true peace is found.The Road back is, possibly the hardest, the most gut-wrenching book I have ever read. It is a must-read for anyone, whether pro or anti war, who really wants to understand the effects that war has on young soldiers.

[bnielsen_30 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Vestfronten, november 19181. Verdenskrig er ved at være slut og vi følger Ernst Birkholz og resterne af det kompagni han var med i. Kompagniføreren Heel, løjtnanten Ludwig Breyer, Jupp, Ferdinand Kosole, Adolf Bethke, Valentin Leher, Max Weil, Willy Homeyer, Ludwig Tjaden, Heinrich Wesslinger, Albert Trosske, Arthur Ledderhose, Felix Müller, Gerhard Pohl, Karl Bröger, Julius Weddekamp, Scheffler, Fassbender, Fritsch, Lucke, Arthur BeckmanSyv kompagniførere på to år og mere end 500 mand taler sit tydelige sprog. Nu er de 32 tilbage. Wesslinger bliver skudt og dør kort tid før freden bryder ud og Ernst går rundt med hans lommeur i lommen.De har svært ved at blive civile igen, men Ernst og nogle af de andre hopper tilbage på skolebænken på seminariet og bliver lærere. De starter med at få seneste stil tilbage: "Hvorfor Tyskland må vinde krigen? Giv 5 grunde."Georg bliver soldat igen, for det er svært at slippe kammeratskabet soldaterne imellem og dem, det lykkes for at blive civile bliver som fremmede for de andre.Glimrende bog om en krig, der egentlig bare var een stor fejl.