Three wonderful books by a master story teller! Read them all!

Erich Maria Remarque is another of my favorite authors because of three of the books he wrote.
“All Quiet on the Western Front,” is one you have no doubt heard about and maybe read, but two others that are almost sequels to it that you may not have read are “The Road Back” and the “Black Obelisk.”
If you have never read them all, read them in that order because the characters in the first appear in the next two.
In case you did not know, “All Quiet on the Western Front” is one of the best war novels ever written, but if you are a woman do not be turned off by that because it is a good story. It also is the book that won the wrath of Adolph Hitler because of how it portrayed war, as something terrible with nothing redeeming about it. Some of this book is so graphic as to be disturbing, but it is presented in a very thoughtful way, if that can be done. There also is humor in the book, and Remarque is a master of humor.”
“The Road Back” picks up where “All Quiet on the Western Front” leaves off or at the end of World War I. It follows a group of soldiers who after four years of war try to find their way back to civilian life. To most of them readjusting is a very difficult task.
One example of that is when they return to high school (or whatever is like that in Germany) to finish their educations which they dropped to go to war. There, they no longer place on pedestals the “masters” whom they greatly admired and even feared before the marched off to war. That is because when the masters try to talk to them about the glory they earned during the war for the “fatherland,” they can only laugh disparagingly because they know from their own experiences that there is no glory in war. Remarque says this much better than I do.
Finally, aw, finally there is what has to be my favorite book of the three, “The Black Obelisk.” It picks up where “The Road Back” ends and carries the reader on to the rise of Hitler.
I cannot say enough about what an entertaining story this is and all of the characters who appear in it. Most curious, however, has to be the heroine who is in an insane asylum.
Anyway, get these books. You will like them.
If for some reason you don’t, I’d like to hear why.
My only real regret, by the way about Remarque is that he died in 1970, and I was in Germany from 1962-64 and could have probably have met him. That, I think, would have been worthwhile.
One final note: he has written a slew of other books, but I have not found any of the others as good as the three mentioned above.