Except for a few scenes set in Hollywood, Robert Ross, the principal character in ["Shadows in Paradise"], explores and uses the sights, sounds and people of Manhattan, as Remarque himself knew them in the closing years of the Second World War.

For readers of our own time, all-too-conscious of what has become of Gotham or, if you will, Mayor Lindsay's inadvertently ironic "Fun City," Remarque's title smacks of poignancy, if not sarcasm….

But we soon discover that what the title suggests to us is not at all what the author intends. For Ross and his friends, New York is indeed a paradise; so, too, are whatever other portions of America that they know. They themselves are the shadows….

[Ross's] affair with Natasha and his experiences as an assistant to an art dealer fill stage center of the novel. In the background we glimpse the lives and destinies of...