'We are no longer young men. We've lost any desire to conquer the world. We are refugees. We are fleeing from ourselves. From our lives. We were eighteen and had begun to love the world and to love being in it; but we had to shoot at it. The first shell to land went straight for our hearts. We've been cut of from real action, from getting on, from progress. We don't believe in those things any more; we believe in the war.'
Written in memory of a generation of young men who arrived at the front fresh from the schoolroom, a generation utterly devasted by war, because the few that survived were left unfit for peace; at once tender and brutal, immediate and profound - All Quiet on the Western Front is a testament to the pity, horror and waste of the First World War, and a passionate plea to prevent its repetition.