Summary
Erich Maria Remarque: The Black Obelisk
From the author of the masterpiece "The Triumphal Arch": "The Black Obelisk" is an iconic novel about the traumatic and turbulent period in Germany after the First World War.
A hardened veteran of the Great War, Ludwig now works in a stone-cutting shop that makes and sells tombstones. His work is significant: in the time after the war, everyone buys monuments. Ludwig wants something more from life: profiting from other people's death and collective misfortune disturbs him. Ludwig, a self-proclaimed poet, begins to feel increasing tension in his homeland. Inflation brought a new and unprecedented brutality to social relations. When he fell in love with the beautiful but troubled Isabella, Ludwig hoped he had finally found his own soul worthy of salvation. Salvation for Ludwig is just that: freeing himself from the manic need to find meaning in a world torn by war. But in every man's life, the hour comes when he has to choose life, despite the fatal mechanism of history that starts its deadly machinery anew.
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