Erich Maria Remarque

Erich Maria Remarque was a German novelist best known for portraying the human cost of war and the disillusionment experienced by those who survived it. Born Erich Paul Remark in Osnabrück in 1898, he was conscripted into the German army during the First World War and was wounded on the Western Front. His wartime experiences shaped much of his fiction, particularly its emphasis on fear, loss, comradeship and the difficulty of returning to civilian life.

Remarque achieved international fame with All Quiet on the Western Front, which follows a group of young German soldiers whose patriotic expectations are destroyed by trench warfare. His other novels include The Road Back, Three Comrades, Arch of Triumph and The Night in Lisbon, many of which explore exile, political persecution and lives disrupted by the rise of Nazism and the Second World War. His books were banned and burned in Nazi Germany, and he later lived in Switzerland and the United States.