قصة الكتاب :
All Quiet on the Western Front is a novel written by German World War I veteran Erich Maria Remarque which was first published in the German newspaper Vossische Zeitunghe in 1928 between November and December. It was released in the form of a book in 1929. A sequel to the book appeared later titled The Road Back. Both these formed part of the several books that were later banned and burned in Nazi Germany. It sold 2.5 million copies in 22 different languages in the 18 months after it was published. Two different films were made on the story in 1930 and 1979 respectively.
\r\nThe story is set around World War I and talks of the mental and physical stress faced by the soldiers who took part in it and their subsequent detachment from civil life upon their return. It is narrated in the voice of 19-year-old Paul Baumer who fights in the German army during World War I. Baumer and his friends list voluntarily in the army to serve their nation, fuelled by the patriotic speeches they listen to. However, disillusion sets in quickly as they are subject to a gruesome ten-week training under the cruel Corporal Himmelstoss and exposed to the brutality of war from the frontlines. The lofty notions they had before are dispelled and they begin to believe that there is nothing glorious or honourable in war. As he faces years of vivid horror, Paul holds on to one single desire. If he manages to get out of the war alive, he will dedicate his life fighting the hate that placed men of the same generation in different uniforms against each other fighting battles that destroyed them on the inside. The book does not talk of heroic tales of war. In fact, right at the beginning of the book, Remarque mentions that what he intends to do is “simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped (its) shells, were destroyed by the war.” In the process of doing this he describes the agony faced by the soldiers in detail – the depressing monotony between battles, the constant threat of artillery, the search for food, the lack of training in the young recruits and the role of random chance in determining which of them would live and which would die. The toll this takes on the psyche of the soldiers who are subject to it is palpable even to the reader experiencing the events merely through words. Paul sees his friends fall one by one. He is the last to die and his death is reported in a single sentence that reads “All quiet on the Western Front”. \r\n
\r\nLargely based on his own experiences at the frontline during World War I, Paul manages to create something larger and insightful. The banality of war experienced by those who directly partake in it and the disconnect it yields between this group and those who call for it passionately is the underlying theme of the novel. The book remains a testament throughout the ages to the reality of loss that ultimately characterizes war. \r\n