RATING: 4 STARS
2018; NYU Press

I loved Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front and many of the writings of World War I soldiers (and others who has participated in the Great War). There is a raw honesty that came from that time that really gave the war realism and cut through some of the propaganda. Many of the works I have read come from Britain, France, USA and Canada. In reading Remarque, you see the other side of the war, from Germany's point of view. The biggest "aha" moment while reading the novel was the lack of differences and the pain from all sides that left men and women ravaged. In this short story collection, we see how the war affected the men fighting in the war, but also the family left behind. Each story gives another heartbreaking story. Remarque has a way of painting his characters so realistic and interesting. After each story I wanted to know more on what would happen next. Whether a soldiers comes home or not, there seems to be a big change for all. Remarque shows how difficult it is trying to fit back into a world that has changed so much. Especially in a country that had been defeated. This collection really spoke to me, and I am definitely adding more Remarque to my TBR list.

***I received a complimentary copy of this ebook from the publisher through Edelweiss/NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own.***

Most of us know Remarque as the author of All Quiet on the Western Front, a powerful anti-war novel of the World War I. These stories explore similar territory, but provide a breadth of characters and situations not available in the novel. I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in the literature of war.

Erich Maria Remarque is one of my favorite war writers. When I heard there was a book of short stories he wrote being republished I knew I had to read it. I'm glad I did.

The way Remarque captures what haunts soldiers is remarkable and sadly, timeless. This is a must read.

Remarque’s reputation rests mainly on his WWI novel All Quiet on the Western Front, but as this wonderfully compelling collection demonstrates he was certainly not a one-trick pony. An illuminating introduction to this volume is essential reading for anyone new to Remarque's writing and equally helpful to those who have read him before. The stories all deal with Remarque's main concern – the appalling damage war does to men’s bodies and minds, the psychological toll of warfare and the impossibility of ever coming to terms with it. As relevant today as to the time they are set in, I found the collection engaging and moving.

Remarque, the exalted author of 'the classic war novel All Quiet on the Western Front,' has struck gold again with this collection of short stories. He is one of the few witnesses and writers of war to really capture the very thing that every human being experiences during war: Loss. Whether it's the loss of innocence, a friend, a neighbor, a family member, the loss of one's mind or the very loss of life itself-Remarque's stories all have the thread of loss in common, permeating the pages with the tragedy that only war brings.. There are small tragedies in each story, some that are repairable while others aren't. A soldier finally returns home after more than a decade away, a la Odysseus, only to find his wife has remarried. A second, gentler story, involves the love of a deeply caring woman who helps her shell-shocked husband regain his sanity and outlook on life, Remarque writes of the varied and poignant ways that war affects not only the soldier who did the fighting, but the people back at home anxiously awaiting their return. And even though the War to End All Wars ended nearly 100 years ago, these stories are still as tragic, and relevant, as they were back in Remarque's time.

Erich Maria Remarque, Eight Stories: Tales of War and Loss (Washington Mews Books 2018; original 1930-1934)

Of course I knew Erich Maria Remarque. Everyone in middle school and again in high school has 20C history class and you can’t avoid reading a few pages of his bestseller about the First World War: All Quiet on the Western Front. And so I did like millions of French teenagers, and I did not feel the need to read the whole book, because I got the idea. And so is Remarque’s name forever associated with the trenches, the gas attacks, the murderous deadlock between several nations at war for years on end.

Of course I guessed that these short stories were about the First World War, from a pacifist standpoint, and after reading a few of them I came to expect these vignettes of soldiers who had survived the war itself but still lived with the fallout. Wasted lives, missed opportunities, physical trauma, emotional trauma, isolation, loss of family and friends, loss of jobs and status. None really stood out, but the collection painted a rather complete landscape of the defeat’s aftermath. Except for one disturbing point: people didn’t seem angry or vengeful. Not the kind of anger and hatred that would explain how people came to see Hitler as the one man who could give the country its honor back.

I was grateful to read the invaluable introduction to the book by Maria Tatar and Larry Wolff, that was probably the most memorable part of the book. These eight stories’ publication spanned originally from 1930 to 1934 in American magazines, and I must say that this lone fact was highly disturbing to me. Remarque left Germany in 1933, just a day before Hitler was named chancellor. He went first to Switzerland, then to the US in 1939 right before the war broke out. So it’s weird (let’s put it mildly) that none of these were mentioned in any of the stories. As if Nazi violent ideology was not born out of the previous war’s defeat and resentment. As if Remarque could detach his present circumstances from the past.

I don’t quite understand what his intent was. Was he a blind pacifist? He wasn’t so blind as to remain in Germany, at any rate. His books were banned and tossed into bonfires. Did he think that the US readers were not ready for a more contemporary rereading of the previous war? Was he worried that people forget the previous war? Was he just cashing in on his bestseller, that was made into a movie in Hollywood in 1930, or did he think that American readers needed to be reminded that Germans were victims too? The collection doesn’t answer any of these questions, but it was intriguing to read and wonder.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.

The horrors of war and its aftermath are reflected here in these eight short stories. With a detailed history of The man behind the stories Larry Wolfe gives a great introduction to Remarque for the complete newcomer to his work like myself. Picking out two stories in particular, The Enemy tells of moments of peace between the warring sides on the frontline and questions who the enemy really were, while Josef’s Wife tells of a faithful wife who runs the family farm when her husband returns from the war with little memory of his life before, the. follows him back to where the horrors took place and we see a glimmer of hope for his future.
I’m completely new to historical fiction (in adult books anyway!) and found these stories engaging and not intimidating as sometimes war stories and historical novels can seem to be

With some writers, it’s hard to separate the biography from the work. In Eight Stories: Tales of War and Loss, by Erich Maria Remarque, the brief stories and vignettes read almost like therapy. Almost all of them are set after World War I and feature German ex-soldiers. Each of them takes a different look at what life is like for those soldiers, from the deeply traumatized to the philosophical to the betrayed. This cross section offers a glimpse at what men might have felt after losing a terrible conflict, in the years before Nazism took hold.

The standout stories, for me, were:

“Where Karl Had Fought.” In this story, an unnamed narrator is taking a road trip with his friend, Karl. Karl is an ebullient man with a lot to look forward to in his life. He’s made a success of himself in the years since he was a soldier. But as they get closer to the place where Karl fought, his forward-looking optimism starts to fade. His “happiness” is a facade; it’s a front he wears over his memories as a soldier in one of the deadliest conflicts in human history.

“Josef’s Wife.” Josef suffers from severe post-traumatic stress disorder after returning from the war. He’s uncommunicative and profoundly depressed. Meanwhile, his wife continues to run the farm as best she can. She thought that, with Josef back, things might return to normal. But as Josef continues to sink into his memories, she decides that there’s only one thing that can cure him: a trip back to the dugout where he was almost buried alive.

“I Dreamt Last Night.” There were a lot of different kinds of deaths in World War I. There were the instant kind, when a bomb or a bullet killed a soldier in a second. There were the lingering kind, in which a wound or infection slowly snuffed out a life. The rarest kind of death is a good death. We get to see a good death in this story. It wasn’t a necessary death—none of the deaths in WWI were—but we get to see a soldier find a measure of peace before he passes on.

Remarque’s stories, all previously published in the early 1930s, are more about creating a mood or painting a psychological portrait of a character instead of plot. It was strange for me to see stories set before 1933 that didn’t discuss the Nazis at all. Eight Stories are all about the aftermath of World War I, but I couldn’t help but fret about the looming destruction that was waiting for soldiers like the characters Remarque created.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration. It will be released 4 May 2018.

So sad, 100 years since the War To End All Wars, and how many wars have there been since? Each worse than the last. Remarque's stories are proof enough that war needs to end. Too many shattered lives (not that leaders care...). Poignant stories.

Erich Maria Remarque is best known for the masterpiece All is quiet on the Western Front. That book sold nine million copies in the US alone and has been translated into sixty languages. What is perhaps most remarkable about the book outside of its antiwar message is that it crossed national boundaries. Nations who soldiers fought the Germans now felt empathy for a German soldier. Remarque's work is better known in America than the great British war poets who were our allies. The book and the movie was not popular with the rising right-wing government of Germany. Remarque moved to Switzerland in 1934 and lost his German citizenship in 1938. From there, he moved to Los Angeles and became a fixture od the social scene and often seen with Marilyn Dietrich.

These eight stories were published in Collier's and Redbook between 1930 and 1934. The translator remains anonymous although there are ideas as to who did the translating. War is a terrible time for all involved and although peace was celebrated on November 11, 1918, the war went on for many for the rest of their lives. Remarque attempt to capture this in eight stories about German soldiers after the war. One story presents the effects of PTSD or shell shock as it was known at the time. A dramatic story that unfortunately aged well. One hundred years after World War I, we have many soldiers who still suffer from PTSD from recent conflicts. The flag waving and supporting the troops then, like now, only happens at the start of the war, not when broken bodies and minds return home. Some return home late improperly imprisoned in another country. News of their deaths arriving home many years before they do.

Memories of battles and bloodshed are remembered with the simplest pleasures. Moments away from the fighting where man appreciates the world. Moments when meeting the enemy and finding out they are the same, like us. Without weapons, the enemy is just people wanting the same things as everyone else -- to return home, peace, and family. These eight stories do for the post World War I era what All is Quiet on the Western Front did for war. Peace does not mean a return to normalcy. There is damage that has been done and has not healed. The land where the battles have been fought gradually heals back into farmland after it has been "mined" for buried metal. The men are not always so lucky. A powerful and timeless message for mankind as long as we continue to have war.

I haven’t read All Quiet on the Western Front. These eight short stories by Erich Maria Remarque suggest it would be a good book to read.
Veterans return from war in emotional distress, physically and socially impaired, and psychologically ill-equipped to manage life.
Remarque has empathy for the enemy. They are men like themselves, bewitched by the strong words of their leaders.
“Josef’s Wife” is haunting, yet ends on a bright note. Josef comes home with amnesia and a strong case of post traumatic stress disorder. His wife stays with him, eventually taking him back to the battlefield, where he regains memories and can function again.
“The Strange Fate of Johann Bartok” is sad. A group of German POWs take over a ship, but are then recaptured. Johann is kept as slave labor for 15 years. By the time he returns home, his wife, believing him dead, has remarried.
Metal scavengers often meet death or cruel injury when unexploded ordinance explodes. The narrator of “Silence” believes they are also violating the dead who remain buried on the battlefields.
These are quick to read, and offer a glimpse of the horror that took place a hundred years ago.

<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36747920-eight-stories" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img border="0" alt="Eight Stories: Tales of War and Loss" src="https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/book/111x148-bcc042a9c91a29c1d680899eff700a03.png" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36747920-eight-stories">Eight Stories: Tales of War and Loss</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4116.Erich_Maria_Remarque">Erich Maria Remarque</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2279087145">5 of 5 stars</a><br /><br />
I was very excited when I saw that this book was available on Netgalley, as Remarque has been one of my favorite authors since I borrowed a copy of All Quiet on the Western Front from my high school English teacher.<br /><br />This small collection certainly did not disappoint. It offers small bites of what Remarque delves into deeper in his novels. The reader is introduced to the "lost generation," whose lives have been forever changed by their experiences in the "Great War." Themes of loss abound: loss of family, loss of sanity, and loss of life. Remarque delves into how the war shaped the lives of both men and women, even years after the guns had fallen silent.<br /><br />My one complaint is about the introduction which, although somewhat enlightening, takes up a full quarter of the book.<br /><br />All in all, it is a quite enjoyable, but short, book that will hopefully inspire modern readers to revisit Remarque's superb works.
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