Black Obelisk

"The Black Obelisk" (1956) is Erich Maria Remarque's most "philosophical" novel, a concentration of the entire ideological content of the famous German writer's work. The concept of "farewell to illusions" runs through the book as a continuous line, characteristic of the texts of representatives of the "lost generation."
Like most of Remarque's works, "The Black Obelisk" is highly autobiographical. The focus is on ordinary people who suffer the collapse of their usual attitudes and rules in the post-war world. There are almost no unambiguously positive and negative characters here - the reader himself evaluates and defines the heroes.
"The Black Obelisk" is a novel about how to remain human in the unbearable conditions of an inhumane society, the fascist barbarity that gradually enveloped interwar Germany, for which Remarque so ached.