All Quiet on the Western Front discussion

I found this book simultaneously beautiful and disturbing at the same time, sometimes in the same sentence.

Has anyone read other books that they think achieved this or consciously made you feel complete opposite emotions at the same time?

No, though Catch 22 comes close.

If you really want to take on a masterpiece read Dante the Divine Comedy.

*I am legend is good too

I do think that this book is a masterpiece, so it's a challenge to come up with very much of a list. You might try "Lord of the Flies" or "The Old Man and the Sea."

I found that when I read Hannibal I was wanting Hannibal to succeed against his enemies, totally forgetting that the man is a serial killer. I had to have a good look at myself in the mirror after that.

I would recommend Pril Levi'sIf This Is a Man / The Truce. It is nothing short of harrowing, but the apparent lack of emotion makes it even worse.

I thought of another one. While maybe not the masterpiece of All Quiet...."The Road" by Cormac McCarthy was beautifully written in places and yet incredibly bleak and sad.

Thanks for the ideas...good list going here.

Night by Elie Wiesel might fit this category:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16...

I fully agree with "The Road", and "All Quiet" belongs to my favourite books of all times. "Waiting for the Barbarians" by Coetzee also came into my mind.

I think there are books that well-written and brilliant -- and perhaps as good. But I think there is no book really like "All Quiet on the Western Front".

I would read The Pianist, which is not fiction, and I thought one of the great books of the twentieth century -- although not to be confused with the movie.

It simply shows the destruction of a generation, and how their elders failed them completely.

Try Jiri Weil "Life with a Star". Ballfest. Couldn't put it down.

All Quiet on the Western Front is beautiful yet disturbing. This is because Remarque actually experienced the life of being in the trenches during World War I. This experience I feel led to the antiwar sentiment in this book, especially at the end, which is so ironic. A couple books that would fit this I think is 1984, Brave New World, and Slaughter House Five.

All Quiet was one of the few books that I can say changed me. I suppose all books do to some degree, subtlety, but this registered a major shift in my psyche. It had the power to do that for the very qualities you mentioned, the beauty and the horror. Red Badge of Courage is similar in this aspect.

I agree with Lisa. This book is one of the few which really changed me. I read it as a teenager, a long time ago, and I haven't dared or wanted to read it again, so I don't remember it in any detail. But I do still remember the effect it had on me.

Pia's recommendations are execellent books for books which are beautiful but disturbing.

This book really explains the horrors, thoughts and life of soldiers at the front lines. Though it is sometimes hard to find, read "A German Deserter's War Experience" by J. Koettgen. It's also a WWI read and is the memoirs of a German soldier during the first couple years of the war. The description and similarity between "All Quite on the Western Front" and this memoir is striking.

Other reads I would recommend if you find "beautiful and disturbing" intriguing are:
- Co. Aytch - by Samuel R. Watkins (Civil War)
- A German Deserter's War Experience - by J. Koettgen (World War I)
- In Harm's Way - by Doug Stanton (World War II)
- Japan at War - by Haruko Taya Cook, Theodore F. Cook (World War II)
- The Things They Carried - by Tim O'Brien (Vietnam)

Have you considered reading the sequel to All Quiet. The Road Back is, in its own way, just as moving although less well-known.

Google Wilfred Owen's poem, "Dulce et Decorum Est". Read it, then read it again.

Owen was a British infantryman in the Great War. Tragically, he didn't survive the war. Amazing poet.

Pippin wrote: "Night by Elie Wiesel might fit this category:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16..."

Yes, I was thinking the same thing while I was reading AQOTWF.

I've been reading Testament of Youth, which is (partly) about WW1 from the perspective of a woman (Vera Brittain) working as a VAD nurse during 1914-1918, who lost her fiancé, two other friends and later her brother in the fighting.

Much of the writing comes from letters and diary entries made when she was in her teens and twenties, so she comes across as snarky and snobbish sometimes, and she can't half ramble on.
She describes lengthy exchanges of letters about life, death, the beauty of the skies & countryside, randomly inserts poetry, but then she switches to the terse telegram she received announcing her correspondent's death, you learn how her fiance was machine-gunned just a day before he was due to return on leave, or how her brother was shot in the head by a sniper and "only lived a few minutes longer" and you can't help but feel desperately sorry for her. It's crushingly sad in places.

What is also a very good read and very comparable to "all quiet" is the short story Der Feind (means literally "the enemy") - it is so very poignant and haunting. It was the first Remarque I ever read.
(Sorry I am not sure what the title is in English, but as it was published in an American newspaper there must be a translation).

I read the book, it disturbed me. One part was when Baumer goes home on leave, and the older men get on him to smash through all the way to Paris; a bunch of armchair generals not in the trenches deling with the mud and bullets.

"The Red Badge of Courage" isn't quite as haunting or beautiful, but it has the same message. The whole 'war is hell' aspect and how those us who have never experienced combat can't really ever understand.

I read All quiet On The western Front. It IS a disturbing view of war. Young men get conned into signing up for what they're told is a glorious adventure for the Kaiser and their country; just a quick ram into paris. But it turns into a long dirty slog of bloodshed and terror, and they wonder, "What the HELL is this all about? Why am I getting killed here?" And Paul Baumer goes back home on leave, and the older men tell him, in effect, "Go in there and kick their asses!", nice and safe behind the lines. Maye this should be required reading in military academies and ROTC programs, to make the cadets think, "Let's not be so quick to go."

I'm with Michael: Catch-22. Actually, that book affected me even more than All Quiet did.