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The Black Obelisk
  • Published: 3 December 2013
  • ISBN: 9780812985559
  • Imprint: RH US eBook Adult
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 448

The Black Obelisk

A Novel




From the author of the masterpiece All Quiet on the Western Front, The Black Obelisk is a classic novel of the troubling aftermath of World War I in Germany.

A hardened young veteran from the First World War, Ludwig now works for a monument company, selling stone markers to the survivors of deceased loved ones. Though ambivalent about his job, he suspects there’s more to life than earning a living off other people’s misfortunes.

A self-professed poet, Ludwig soon senses a growing change in his fatherland, a brutality brought upon it by inflation. When he falls in love with the beautiful but troubled Isabelle, Ludwig hopes he has found a soul who will offer him salvation—who will free him from his obsession to find meaning in a war-torn world. But there comes a time in every man’s life when he must choose to live—despite the prevailing thread of history horrifically repeating itself.

“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: 3 December 2013
  • ISBN: 9780812985559
  • Imprint: RH US eBook Adult
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 448

About the author

Erich Maria Remarque

ERICH MARIA REMARQUE was born in Germany in 1898 and drafted into the German army during World War I. His novel All Quiet on the Western Front was published in 1928 and was an instant best seller. When the Nazis came to power, Remarque left Germany for Switzerland; he lost his German citizenship, his books were burned, and his films banned. He went to the United States in 1938 and became a citizen in 1947. He later lived in Switzerland with his second wife, the actress Paulette Goddard. He died in September 1970.

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