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In the US Erich Maria Remarque seems best known because of All Quiet on the Western Front. But for me, having grown up in post-Soviet Ukraine, it was always Three Comrades that was THE Remarque.

I loved this story dearly as a young teen. The greater historical context - the Weimar Republic, the rise of the Nazism, the interwar economic bleakness in Germany - all that escaped my young self in lieu of Robert and Pat’s love and the relationship between Robert and his friends (and the even deeper relationship between Robert and his rum. Seriously, a doctor even comments that his liver is too firm. The guy is pretty much in cirrhosis territory, surely). The rest was the set decoration back then. And now that’s what I actually ended up paying much more attention to rather than the melodrama in the foreground.

Remarque published this in 1936 and set it in 1928, long after it was obvious that what was happening in Germany at that time was bad news, but before even the slightest pretense at civility and normalcy was abandoned and nobody bothered to hide the real face of the horror from the others. It’s the book written *in the middle* of awful history happening, and knowing that makes me actually respect Remarque’s clarity more, with no benefit of hindsight and yet still seeing it. (It’s like writing a book set in modern-day Russia knowing how warped everything is but not yet knowing exactly when and how the overwhelming madness is going to end.)

“In the interval more people had arrived, and it was now obvious that they did not really belong here. With pale faces and threadbare clothes, they wandered, hands behind their backs, rather diffidently through the rooms, with eyes that were seeing something far other than the Renaissance pictures and the still, marble antique figures. Many were sitting on the red upholstered seats that were placed around. They sat wearily there, as if prepared to stand up at once, should anyone come to move them on. You could see in their attitudes that upholstered seats were something which it was quite incredible it should cost nothing to sit on. They were used to receiving nothing for nothing. It was very quiet in all the rooms, and despite all the visitors one hardly heard a word; and yet it seemed to me as if I were looking on at an enormous struggle—the soundless struggle of men who were stricken down, but did not mean to give in yet. They had been thrown out from the fields of their work, their striving, their callings; now they had come into the quiet rooms of Art, in order not to fall into paralysis and despair. They were thinking of bread, always and only of bread and occupation; but they came here to escape from their thoughts for a few hours—and amongst the clean-cut Roman heads and the imperishable grace of white, Greek female figures they wandered around with the dragging gait, the bowed shoulders of men who have no purpose—a shocking contrast, a cheerless picture of what humanity had been able, and unable, to achieve in a thousand years—the summit of eternal works of art, but not even bread enough for each of their brothers.��

It’s a story of a Lost Generation recovering after World War I, set on the background of economic disaster. The days of inflation by the minute may be over, but the days of crippling economic insecurity, widespread unemployment and constant fears of those who are clinging to any job of losing it and facing absolute destitution �� all that gives a really good idea of how a self-important little man with big promises and convenient scapegoats all lined up was able to capture the nation’s hearts. No wonder disillusionment and alcoholism and fast cars for a generation that lost their innocence on WW2 battlefields seem like a reasonable solution in a life with few hopes.

The love story this time for me was secondary as I cared more about Robby’s connections with his friends and acquaintances and the alcohol and care much more than about his tragic love story with Pat. It’s the other sparks of human connection that shone brightly for me and made me care this time. It’s friendship and shared miseries and support that give hope in this otherwise bleak time.

It’s a simply told story, straightforward, without that ornamentality that too often permeates literary fiction. It is a slice of life story, but meaningful and although melancholic, not woe-is-me misery porn. I read it in Ukrainian translation this time (I don’t read German, and English translation to me seemed a bit stilted when I read it years ago), and to those who can read Ukrainian I highly recommend it; it felt alive and “native�� rather than a translated piece.

4 stars.

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