The Black Obelisk
by Erich Maria Remarque (Translated from the German by Denver Lindley)
- Used
- good
- Hardcover
- first
- Condition
- Good
- Seller
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Wamuran, Queensland, Australia
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About This Item
In good condition - has markings from use - no dustjacket - due to differing weights for books the postage maybe adjusted at checkout.
The Black Obelisk (German: Der schwarze Obelisk) is a novel written in 1956 by the German author Erich Maria Remarque. This novel paints a portrait of Germany in the early 1920s, a period marked byhyperinflation and rising nationalism.
Ludwig, the protagonist, is in his mid twenties; just like most of his friends, he is a World War I veteran. Although aspiring to be a poet, he works for a friend, Georg, managing the office of a small tombstone company. He tries to earn some extra money as a private tutor to a son of a bookstore owner, and by playing the organ at the chapel of a local insane asylum.
Thanks to this diversity of activities, Ludwig interacts with a wide cross-section of the German population of his town and the surrounding villages and we are allowed to witness those interactions. We see, for example, businessmen – some trying to stick to the old principles and going bankrupt, others speculating on stocks, exploiting the system and becoming rich in morally ambiguous ways. We see war veterans – some highly critical of the old ways that led them to a failed war, others longing for the old days of military discipline and turning into inflexible nationalists hailing the virtues of their rising leader, Adolf Hitler.
A lot of events are connected to women. Two of them leave Ludwig, just because he cannot float in the contemporary world of greed and money. He chose to stay "clean", maybe not by himself, but he cannot be anything other than be true to his ideals and now he has to live with that choice. A third woman, probably the most important to him, is Genevieve Terhoven, whom he meets at the insane asylum. She is there for being schizophrenic and considers herself to be "Isabelle" most of the time. Ludwig gets more and more attached to her, feeling a "pure" love for her because she sees the world so differently.
The line "The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic" (Aber das ist wohl so, weil ein einzelner immer der Tod ist — und zwei Millionen immer nur eine Statistik.) is often not credited to the book but attributed to Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.
Synopsis
Erich Maria Remarque , who was born in Germany, was drafted into the German army during World War I. Through the hazardous years following the war he worked at many occupations: schoolteacher, small-town drama critic, race-car driver, editor of a sports magazine. His first novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, was published in Germany in 1928. A brilliant success, selling more than a million copies, it was the first of many literary triumphs. When the Nazis came to power, Remarque left Germany for Switzerland. He rejected all attempts to persuade him to return, and as a result 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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Details
- Bookseller
- DASHbooks (AU)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- DASHbooks4
- Title
- The Black Obelisk
- Author
- Erich Maria Remarque (Translated from the German by Denver Lindley)
- Book Condition
- Used - Good
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Edition
- First
- Binding
- Hardcover
- Publisher
- Hutchinson & Co Ltd
- Place of Publication
- London
- Date Published
- 1957
- Weight
- 0.00 lbs
- Keywords
- blacko belisk, german, first, erich maria remarque, denver lindley,
- Bookseller catalogs
- Novel; Social History;
Terms of Sale
DASHbooks
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