Spark of Life
  • Published: 15 April 2014
  • ISBN: 9780449912515
  • Imprint: Random House US Group
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 432
  • RRP: $34.99

Spark of Life

A Novel

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Reissued in a gorgeous new trade paperback package and for the first time in eBook, this novel by the reknowned author of World War I masterpiece All Quiet on the Western Front will be published right on time to celebrate the centennial of WWI in 2014.

In Spark of Life, a powerful classic from the renowned author of All Quiet on the Western Front, one man’s dream of freedom inspires a valiant resistance against the Nazi war machine.
 
For ten years, 509 has been a political prisoner in a German concentration camp, persevering in the most hellish conditions. Deathly weak, he still has his wits about him and he senses that the end of the war is near. If he and the other living corpses in his barracks can hold on for liberation—or force their own—then their suffering will not have been in vain.
 
Now the SS who run the camp are ratcheting up the terror. But their expectations are jaded and their defenses are down. It is possible that the courageous yet terribly weak prisoners have just enough left in them to resist. And if they die fighting, they will die on their own terms, cheating the Nazis out of their devil’s contract.
 
“The world has a great writer in Erich Maria Remarque. He is a craftsman of unquestionably first rank, a man who can bend language to his will. Whether he writes of men or of inanimate nature, his touch is sensitive, firm, and sure.”—The New York Times Book Review
  • Published: 15 April 2014
  • ISBN: 9780449912515
  • Imprint: Random House US Group
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 432
  • RRP: $34.99
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About the author

Erich Maria Remarque

Erich Maria Remarque was a German author and veteran of the First World War. He was born 1898 in Osnabrück, Germany. At the age of 18 he was conscripted into the German army. During his service he was wounded by shrapnel in the left leg, right arm and neck. Following the war he worked as a primary school teacher, and later as a librarian, a journalist and a technical writer.
Among Remarque’s published novels were All Quiet on the Western Front, The Road Back, Three Comrades and Arch of Triumph. His works were publicly burned by the Nazi German government, and in 1947 he and his first wife became naturalised citizens of the United States. Four years earlier, his sister had been executed at the behest of Hitler’s ‘People’s Court’.

Remarque adapted the book Ten Days to Die, about Hitler’s final days, as a screenplay, and he also wrote for the stage. His last novel was The Night in Lisbon, published in 1962. During his lifetime Remarque married twice and had love affairs with the actresses Hedy Lamarr, Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo.

Also by Erich Maria Remarque

The Way Back
The Promised Land
Flotsam
The Night in Lisbon
Shadows in Paradise
All Quiet on the Western Front
See all

Praise for Spark of Life

Praise for All Quiet on the Western Front

  • "All Quiet on the Western Front is unquestionably the best story of the World War."--H. L. Mencken
  • "The greatest book about the war that I have ever seen."--Christopher Morley
  • "The world has a great writer in Erich Maria Remarque. He is a craftsman of unquestionably the first rank, a man who can bend language to his will. Whether he writes of men or of inanimate nature, his touch is sensitive, firm, and sure."--The New York Times Book Review