Readers who consider themselves fans because of this first book are often surprised to learn that it was followed by ten more novels. This surprise is in turn surprising, for when the later works first appeared, several of them were also best-sellers; and from the 1930s through the 1960s the appearance of "a new Remarque" was a major publishing event--especially outside of Germany, where the author's reputation was never as high as it was abroad.
His books have appeal on several counts. They are generally well-crafted novels with clear plot lines; they are easy to read; and they mix adventure, suspense, social comment, and some violence with a central love story. At the same time, they were clearly intended as documents of their age, telling in presumably realistic fashion what was happening to Germans in the chaotic 1920s, during the Hitler years and the war, and in exile. No doubt it was Remarque's vivid chronicling of at least one side of the German experience in this momentous century that once made up a major part of the appeal for non-German readers; and his episodic style and his use of the first person and the present tense gave several of the later novels the same appearance of eyewitness authenticity that Im Westen nichts Neues had had.
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