Erich Remarque (1898-1970) German/American, The Road Back First American Edition. With dust jacket. 

Size: 7 7/8 X 5 3/8 X 1 in. 

This book is The Road Back, by Erich Maria Remarque, and it is a first American edition. The book is the sequel to Remarque’s All Quiet On The Western Front and details the experience of young men in Germany who have returned from the trenches of World War I and are trying to integrate back into civilian life, and it comes in the scarce dust jacket. The book has textured gray boards with red and black lettering on the spine and front cover, blank endpapers, the title page says the book was translated from the German by A. W. Wheen and published in Boston by Little Brown and Company in 1931, the copyright page says the title of the book in German was Der Weg Zuruck and the German edition was first published in April 1931, this is the first American edition and was published a month later in May 1931, the text is 344 pages long, with the red topspin applied by the publisher, and the book has the original dust jacket with its original $2.50 price on the front flap and the front of the dust jacket pictures a German soldier walking with a knapsack and bent head with cemetery crosses in the background. The book was first serialized in the German newspaper Vossische Zeitung before being published in book form in April 1931. Erich Maria Remarque (1898 - 1970) was a German novelist. His landmark novel All Quiet on the Western Front, based on his experience in the Imperial German Army during World War I, was an international bestseller, which created a new genre of veterans writing about conflict. Remarque fought in Belgium in 1917 and was wounded by shrapnel in his left leg, right arm and neck and took nearly a year to recover. The book had strong anti-war themes, which led to Remarque’s condemnation by German propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, who called Remarque “unpatriotic” for his antiwar views. Erich was also accused of being Jewish because his last name was Kramer, according to the German propaganda machine - Kramer was Remark spelled backwards - and while he was born Erich Paul Remark, his grandfather had changed the family name to Remarque, but Goebbels persisted with the idea that Remarque  was Jewish when he wasn’t - and the propaganda machine made further false claims that Remarque had not even seen active service during World War I. In 1938, Remarque's German citizenship was revoked and he was exiled for his antiwar views. And as if he hadn’t suffered enough, his sister was beheaded after she was taken to court in 1943 for saying she thought  the war was lost. After coming back from the war, the atrocities of war, along with his mother's death, caused him great anguish and grief, so he started using "Maria" as his middle name instead of "Paul", to commemorate his mother, and eventually he became a naturalized American citizen. The book measures 7 7/8 x 5 3/8 inches wide and is in very good condition. The binding is tight and the pages and text are clean, with faint brown spots on the front and rear flyleaves and light bumps at the bottom of a couple of pages in the Prologue. The dust jacket is in pretty good condition - it retains the original price of $2.50 on the front flap, it has some creases on the front cover and modest chips at the top and bottom edges, and it is the original dust jacket, not a facsimile. Prices for the first American edition go up to $940 on the rare book website we use, and a signed copy goes for $7200.