Three Comrades

In 1928 Robert Lohkamp, Otto Köster and Gottfried Lenz—three veterans of the First World War—run a struggling motor-repair business in a German city. Their friendship provides stability in a society marked by unemployment, poverty and armed political movements.

Robert’s relationship with Pat Hollmann draws her into the comrades’ circle and gives him a future beyond survival and drink. The novel sets love and loyalty against illness, economic insecurity and street violence, presenting late Weimar Germany through people whose wartime bonds remain stronger than the institutions around them.