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All Quiet on the Western Front is a novel by Erich Maria Remarque, a German veteran of World War I, about the horrors of that war and also the deep detachment from German civilian life felt by many men returning from the front. The book was first published in German as Im Westen nichts Neues in January 1929. It sold 2.5 million copies in twenty-five languages in its first eighteen months in print. In 1930 the book was turned into an Oscar-winning movie of the same name, directed by Lewis Milestone. Although the typically used English translation (A. W. Wheen, 1929) gives the title as "All Quiet on the Western Front," the literal translation is in fact "Nothing New on the Western Front": this title adds to the terrible irony of the actual situation but was dropped in favour of "All Quiet". Separately, the phrase "all quiet on the western front" later became popular slang for a lack of action (in reference to the Phony War in World War II's Western Front).

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18y ago

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