Customer Reviews

Three Comrades

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It is a crime that Remarque is only widely known for All Quiet on the Western Front in America. Not that that's a bad book or anything; it's one of the best books of all time. I like it very much indeed. But the fact is that Remarque never wrote a bad book, and that he wrote a great many books after Western Front. All of them are worth reading. Black Obelisk, A Life for a Life, A Time to Live and a Time to Die, Shadows in Paradise...all of them. But above all, there is Three Comrades, very much my favourite book of all time. Have you read Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises? What about Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby? Those are always the books one names when talking about literature of the Lost Generation. And they're great books too. But why isn't Three Comrades ever mentioned? It is a mystery!

Three Comrades takes place in Weimar Germany. We see hints of Hitler's rise to power. They help us picture said rise, even if they don't explain it. But the book isn't about politics - like The Sun Also Rises, it's about genuine people caught trying to find love, grace and dignity in a world increasingly devoid of all three. And they succeed, finding strength in love and friendship. And that's what this book is about - human friendship and human love, the two most important and beautiful aspects of life. The works of Remarque always feature an odd dichotomy - a sort of clash between a Romantic, highly idealized worldview and grim, bland, prosaic reality. It is this that makes his works so great - the promise that it's possible for the former to exist surrounded by the latter, hard though it may be. It is this that also allows Remarque to see the humanity present in any individual, no matter how debased or outcast (witness his attitude towards the prostitutes). It is this that makes Pat and Robert's romance the sweetest and most believable one in any book I've read. It is this, all in all, that made me genuinely sad, not only at the ending, but at having to leave the world and the people Remarque created. And no higher praise is possible.

My words can't do it any justice, so I won't go into further detail; you'll just have to read it. Hey, Mr. Publisher: how about releasing a new edition that's priced a little lower so people will actually want to buy a great book? Is that so much to ask?

This is perhaps the most poignant of Remarque's novels. Much like Remarque's other works, it is told from a first person point of view, adding a powerful realism and humanity to the story. Three Comrades follows the story of three World War I veterans and how they survive in Weimar Germany. Robert, Otto, and Gottfried, own an auto repair shop and constantly have to scrape about for funds to stay in business. When Robert meets a mysterious young woman the story catapults into a love story as only Remarque can tell one--with great sympathy and insight into the tragic side of human existence. Using parts of his own life as a template, Remarque masterfully tells the story of Robert and Pat causing the reader to laugh and to cry with the rise and fall of the characters' dreams. Written in 1937, this book is not only a wonderful story, but an insight into the conditions that spawned the rise of the Third Reich. If you like this novel, then definitly read the Black Obelisk.

Without a doubt, "Three Comrades" is the saddest story I have ever read and one of the most beautiful. This novel is vastly under-rated. It should be on every "classics" list of great fiction. There is not a rating category high enough for it.

Many lovely pictures emerge page after page -- of Berlin in the late 1920's. Take page 129 as a small example: "We walked on. Then we came to the graveyard. The trees rustled, their tops were no longer visible. As the mist continued to thicken the fairy light began. May bugs came reeling drunk out of the limes and buzzed heavily against the wet panes of the street lamps. The mist transformed everything, lifted it up and bore it away, the hotel opposite was already afloat like an ocean liner with lighted cabins on the black mirror of the asphalt, the grey shadow of the church behind it became a ghostly sailing-ship with tall masts, lost in the grey-red light; and now the houses, like a long line of barges, came adrift and began to move."

The characters are remarkable, and their stories are heart-breaking, while at once ringing with humor and pathos. Some episodes are hilarious; others make you cry unabashedly.

Three Comrades is a love story - no it's several love stories. One is of Robby and Pat (yes, unusual names for a story about young Germans). Another is among the abiding friendships and devotion between the three young men, their triumphs and travails, as the deteriorating social structure of pre-Hitler Germany crumbles around their feet, ruining their lives. The final love story is the heart-warming thread of true care and care-taking shown by the wider circle of the gloriously depicted players in this story, some sad and forlorn, others happy-go-lucky and still others greedy and vile. The mix is, of course, sensational, real and vivid. Every single character speaks with clarity in his or her own voice.

The story itself (once you pass through the first 40 pages) is simply compelling. You sense quickly the doom that is bound to come; you know that some will die; you know that tragedy will eventually win. You know all of this, and it does not matter. You cheer and root for these young people. You want them to live and thrive. You hope against hope that everything will be all right. You laugh, cry and exult with them. And in the end you are moved in your soul by their plight.

The story is - in a word - sensational. As to the fate of the characters, page 375: "'No,' said I, `I don't want to betray anything. But I do want that not everything we touch should always go to pieces.'" On the German social order, page 402: "'...They don't want politics at all. They want substitute religion.' He looked around. 'Of course. They want to believe in something again - in what, it doesn't matter. That's why they are so fanatical, too, of course.'"

You will laugh and you will cry and you will be unable to put this book down or stop yourself from thinking about these people long after you finish it.

While it might help, you need not read "All Quiet on the Western Front" first. Three Comrades stands on its own merits.

Now, why did I not give this book a 5 star rating, one that it clearly deserves and that most reviewers correctly award to it? It is because of the translation by A. W. Wheen. The feeling that the characters in this story are German and that the story takes place in Germany in the late 1920's is completely lost by the "over-the-top," slangy 100% British translation. This is not a British movie about Germans. This is a German language novel in need of a good English language translation. But, the way these people talk --- via this translation --- completely neutralizes their German-ness. The story could be in Southampton, or even Denver for that matter. I grew tired of the colloquial British-isms. Why not keep some of the German language --- un-translated? Except for an occasional "Ach!" we are forced to read this story in rather low-level British English --- a complete travesty. I don't want to see the word "lorry" or the word "kerb" or "tyres" or the phrase "...knocked the car down to us" in this story. Such a translation is an insult to the book, the author, and the historical value of the tale.

I implore the publishers to consider commissioning and publishing a sensible American English translation of this marvelous book, while at the same time keeping the tone, feeling and ethos of the German language, the German sensibilities and its very German setting. I detested reading what may have been an intentional de-Germanization of this glorious book by virtue of this horrible British translation.

Thus, it is because of the translation alone, not its literary value, that I decided to rate the book a mere 3. On its merits, the book is a 5++. But, alas, a translated book is only as good as the translation. Remarque deserves better.

Three Comrades was the first book by Remarque that I've read and still I think of it as of his best novel. Under the impression from this one, without any delay I read 3 or 4 of his novels in a row and got a little dissapointed, as (it was already mentioned) many of his works have a lot in common. Later on I understood that one has to make intervals reading books by one author no matter how much you liked the first or the second one. That way the reader can appriciate the original writer's style, cherish and remember it. I don't remember any other book that made greater impression on me by depicting true human feelings and emotions.
Read it and you will be amazed to know that your own heart loves, misses, suffers, hates and cries together with "Three Comrades"' characters.

As good as it gets! You will never be able to forget this book, cause it makes you remember what being human is all about. Read it.

Except for All Quiet On The Western Front and Spark Of Life, there is a strange sameness to all of Remarque's novels. It's as if he spent his life attempting to perfect a specific theme populated with a specific set of characters. Invariably, the main character is a life-torn man, outwardly bitter and cynical, yet emotionaly informed by a romantic core which allows him to navigate life with great sensitivity. Typically these men find themselves in relationships -- usually sweet, sometimes tempestuous -- with a woman who is doomed to die in either body or spirit.

Three Comrades is the first such book Remarque wrote, and sets the thematic stage for almost everything which followed. To those who have read any of his refugee novels, you will recognize the root characters of all his later work: they who survive life by day, philosophize over drinks at night, and eventually watch each other die for the sin of living in the 20th century. Anyone who knows and loves Remarque's novels will find old friends here, and be delighted with the reunion.

To those unfamiliar with the main body of Remarque's work, you would probably do better reading The Black Obelisk, Night in Lisbon, or Arch of Triumph for an introduction to Germany's Lost Generation. The type of characters he habitually portrays are less compelling here. Possibly it's because the characters are new to him in this novel. Possibly it's because there's less opportunity for them to shine: The 1928 Weimer Republic depicted here is a relatively comfortable period compared to the extremes of rabid inflation or spreading Nazism in his other books. Remarque is only at his best in a completely shattered world -- a vaguely restless one just doesn't suffice for his stories.

If Remarque had any great message, it was "people are to be loved, but humanity is always suspect." Although that point is not shrouded here, it is distracted beneath the fluff of an charmingly iffy love story during a time when, despite shootings in the streets, it could still be an issue of concern whether or not a man's necktie looked too ratty to wear on a date.

In his best (in my opinion) novel, Remarque tells an unforgettable story of love, friendship and loyalty in the chaotic post-WWI Germany. When the whole world seems to be going mad and there is nothing anymore to live for, one man realizes that love and friends are the only two things in this world worth living for, and dying for. This book is a tale of finding something so pure in the times when it seems that all the purity of this world has been wiped out from people's lives by the war, poverty, greed, jealosy, and constant nightmares. Staying true to one's feelings, not giving in and not giving up, remaining loyal at any cost and having the spirit to go on, are the main themes of this book.

Believe it or not, but this book is one of only few that help you resist the cynicism of the modern society. Great reading from the great author!

When I first heard about this book, I wasn't that impressed, I don't like others telling me what to read; but as soon as I began reading this book, my point of view has changed, I suddenly couldn't stop reading it; and the more I read - the more I was charmed. This book changed my whole world, and I felt really a different person when I finished it. If you have the opportunity to experience this - don't wait too long!! :) This is one of the most beatuful books I've ever read, and although I read it only once, it is one of my favorites. Read it and you'll know what I'm talking about!!

The humanitarian aspect of Remarque finds better expression in no other book . Only a man who has breathed death could describe love so poignantly .