["Arch of Triumph"] is a novel of Europeans between wars yet forced to be perpetually at war, a novel that is animated by a spirit of savage disillusionment toward this last war before it had even begun, foreseeing the war's caprices and disasters.

"Arch of Triumph" is a part of Erich Maria Remarque's somber, stylized panorama of modern Europe's broken and dispossessed, begun in "All Quiet on the Western Front," continued in "The Road Back," "Three Comrades"" and "Flotsam," and now given a classic setting and told in the classic way, a story of exiles in a land of exiles. It makes absorbing reading, though it is sometimes overcontrived; it is briskly paced, though the lacquered writing lacks the simple spontaneity of "All Quiet on the Western Front." And through its penetrating stories of human fortitude it should stir even those of us who have been telling ourselves...