Erich Maria Remarque

Erich Maria Remarque was a German-born novelist, born in Osnabrück on 22 June 1898. As a young man he was conscripted into the German army during the First World War and was wounded at the front. After the war he worked in a range of jobs, including teaching and journalism, before his novel about the experience of ordinary soldiers brought him worldwide fame in 1929 in book form. When the Nazis came to power, his books were banned and burned, and he left Germany, eventually settling in Switzerland and later living in the United States. Many of his later novels deal with exile, refugees, love under threat and the long shadow of war. His plain, spare style and his sympathy for people caught up in forces beyond their control made him one of the most widely read German writers of the twentieth century. He died on 25 September 1970.