An Old Classic: All Quiet on the Western Front
A Novel for the Third Millennium Erich Maria Remarque I have just finished re-reading what is without question a classic - a classic war novel to be precise. It has lain on my shelves for years, seventeen to be precise since I last read it. Now that I have put it down, I question myself as to why I did not re-read years ago. I have literally been consumed by it as an account of the gruesome experience of war. It has moved me as seldom I have been moved before. The novel is All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque. It is a novel that unquestionably draws one towards depth. Certainly man's inhumanity to man is delineated therein very vividly. We have accounts of a soldier still running several steps even though his head has been blown clear away and blood is spurting up from the chopped neck, or of a man's back having been blown off to reveal the two breathing lungs etc. etc. But it is not just the clarity of such descriptions that terrify, but rather...