All Quiet on the Western Front

by Erich Maria Remarque, Tony Evans (Retold by), Sarah Wimperis (Illustrator)

Overview

When Paul Buumer and his classmates join the army, nothing has prepared them for the death and destruction that they witness. Machine guns, huge artillery shells and poison gas create a nightmare world for these young men and their older comrades. For months and years attack is followed by counter-attack. Will any of Paul's friends survive long enough to return to their families and loved ones? Will there be a place for them at home, when peace finally comes? Can any of these soldiers make sense of the massive conflict in which they are involved?

Baker Street Readers are retellings of literary classics in 64 pages, with illustrations. These books make classic stories available to intelligent young readers as a bridge to the full texts and to language students wanting access to other cultures. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781912464173
Publisher:	Baker Street Press
Publication date:	11/01/2018
Series:	Baker Street Readers
Pages:	64
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.40(d)
Age Range:	9 - 11 Years

About the Author

Erich Maria Remarque, born Erich Paul Remark, was a German novelist who created many works about the terror of war. His best known novel is All Quiet on the Western Front (1928) which tells the tale of German soldiers in World War I. This was followed by The Road Back (1931) and The Three Comrades (1936).

Read an Excerpt

"Summer of 1918-Never was life in the line more bitter and more full of horror than in the hours of the bombardment, when the blanched faces lie in the dirt and the hands clutch at the one thought: No! No! Not now! Not now at the last moment!"
—from All Quiet on the Western Front

Table of Contents

Introduction     7
Biographical Sketch     9
The Story Behind the Story     17
List of Characters     20
Summary and Analysis     23
Critical Views     52
Brian Murdoch on All Quiet on the Western Front as a Weimar Antiwar Novel     52
Brian Murdoch on Remarque and Homer     57
A.F. Bance on the Novel's Best-seller Status     63
Chris Daley on the Force of Silence in All Quiet on the Western Front     68
Hildegard Emmel on All Quiet on the Western Front as a Weimar Novel     71
Vita Fortunati on the Representation of World War I in Hemingway, Remarque, and Ford Madox Ford     75
Dorothy B. Jones on the Film Version of the Novel     79
Helmut Liedloff on A Farewell to Arms and All Quiet on the Western Front     83
Alfredo Bonadeo on Paul Baumer's Relationship to German Culture     87
Modris Eksteins on the Novel as a Postwar Commentary     92
Hans Wagener on the Final Chapter of All Quiet on the Western Front     96
Robert Baird on Hollywood's Ambivalence to World War I Novels     100
Wilhelm J. Schwarz on Remarque's Memorial to the Unknown Soldier     105
Works   Erich Maria Remarque     110
Annotated Bibliography     111
Contributors     120
Acknowledgments     123
Index     125

Editorial Reviews

The world has gained a great writer in Erich Maria Remarque. He is a craftsman of unquestionably first rank, a man who can bend language to his will.

"Remarque has been served generally well by his previous English-language translators, but never better than by Kurt Beals of the University of Richmond. Mr. Beals’s shimmering version of this novel should become the standard for English readers. He commits to each page a burnished prose that beautifully stewards the original, and he captures more vividly than any other translator the sensory onslaught of Remarque’s narration, the unholy cacophony of trench battle. Mr. Beals also vividly renders Remarque’s indelible imagery: corpses bombed out of their caskets, the baffling presence of butterflies that ‘pause to rest on the teeth of a skull.’"— William Giraldi The Wall Street Journal

"A new translation by Kurt Beals...renders Remarque’s German in a colloquial register—sometimes caustic, sometimes lyrical—that is itself a product of the Great War...He gives us a version that can stand as Remarque’s contemporary."— George Packer The Atlantic

"A leaner, far more kinetic reading experience than that old Wheen translation...lively, unsentimental...a welcome invitation for a re-read."— Steve Donoghue Open Letters Review

"We all know how the story ends, but Beals’s taut, approachable translation casts the wartime classic in a fresh light."— New Criterion

"Kurt Beals brings an immediacy to what has been called the greatest war novel of all time, refreshing the text for a new generation of readers who might have only seen the Netflix version of Paul Bäumer and his comrades navigating the trenches of the First World War. \"— Smarty Pants Podcast, The American Scholar

"It is very fortunate that Kurt Beals has written a new translation of Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, and produced a crisp, fresh and very much more faithful to the German original version that brings new life to one of the classic novels to come out of the First World War, and makes it well worth reading again, or reading for the first time. Beals’s translation makes it clear why the book has sold millions of copies in almost every language, and been made into two major motion pictures—it is a moving story about war, all war, and not dated at all."— Michael Korda, author of Muse of Fire

"Almost a hundred years ago, All Quiet on the Western Front invented the anti-war novel. This fluent new translation captures the devastating experiences of ordinary soldiers with renewed urgency."— Martin Puchner, author of The Language of Thieves: My Family’s Obsession with a Secret Code the Nazis Tried to Eliminate

"[A] starkly effective new translation."— Matt Hanson Arts Fuse

From the Publisher