"Few books have made so great an impact, political or literary, as Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, the most famous of all anti-war novels. But who was Remarque?" "Remarque was a self-made man - born into a poor family, he moulded himself into a connoisseur of art whose collection became one of the finest in Europe, and an author whose novels brought him wealth, fame and a vast readership. He was also the lover of some of the world's most desirable women. At the core of his life was a long-lasting affair with Marlene Dietrich who helped him flee from the Nazis as Europe went to war. Arch of Triumph, the bestseller he wrote while a stateless emigre in Hollywood, was inspired by the ecstasy and torment Dietrich caused him. Other lovers included Greta Garbo, Dolores del Rio, Maureen O'Sullivan (the 'Jane' of the Tarzan films), the tragic Lupe Velez, the double Oscar winner Luise Rainer, and Paulette Goddard, who became his second wife." "Behind the glamour he was a troubled man, haunted by the political fall-out from his famous book, an embittered exile from the Germany he loved, tortured by the infidelities of his first wife, and by the fate of his favourite sister who paid a terrible price in his name at the hands of the Nazis."--BOOK JACKET
A social and cultural history of cycling in post war Europe seen through the eyes of a veteran racing cyclist. Written with great literary and historical relish, One More Kilometre examines the spread of cycling's popularity, how it developed into a sport and how the bicycle has changed people's lives - all viewed through the eyes of a seasoned 56-year-old racing cyclist/art crtic who keeps 11 racing cycles in his garden shed and who never cycles less than 10,000 miles a year. The book starts with the 1950s, regarded as the golden age of cycling, and when the author, an unhappy communist child, first discovered cycling and its emancipating powers. Progressing through four decades of cycling social history, the author examines cycling as a Continental phenomenon; the rise and fall of the Tour de France; the lives of the great trackmen; cycling in its domestic form; and cycling for fun.
For more than seventy years Erich Maria Remarque's startlingly realistic and intensely moving antiwar novel All Quiet on the Western Front has remained a worldwide best-seller. A political and literary sensation when it was first published, Remarque's masterpiece was banned and burned in the 1930s by the Nazis. Remarque himself was forced to flee Germany, and eventually, in 1939, he immigrated to America. A troubled man haunted by the horrors of Nazi Germany and embittered by his exile from the country he loved, Remarque strove to protect his privacy. In Hollywood glamour, in the beauties of art, in wealth, in the fame gained by successive best-sellers like Arch of Triumph, Remarque hid his torment and buried his fears. Love, too, held its woes for Remarque. Extraordinary, poignant, glamorous, the portrait that emerges in this potent biography of a modern literary giant—the story of a disadvantaged poor boy who at eighteen did indeed serve on the Western Front and subsequently molded himself into a cultured man of the world—is as extravagantly lit by romance as it is shadowed by anguish.
English summary: This is the first French-language biography of Erich Maria Remarque (1898-1970). Hated by nationalists in his own country, forced into exile by the Nazis, Remarque viscerally confronted the two tragedies that besieged Germany: World War I and National Socialism. This biography follows Remarque from obscurity to fame, from poverty to Hollywood, tracing his political activism as well as his complicated search for the ideal love. French description: La premiere biographie publiee en francais d'Erich Maria Remarque (1898-1970). Le sobre compte rendu des faits qu'elle propose ne rend que plus saisissante l'etonnante vie de l'auteur de A l'Ouest rien de nouveau. Ecrivain d'abord hai par les nationalistes et les militaristes de son pays dans l'apres premiere guerre mondiale, puis contraint a l'exil par le regime nazi dont il fut l'un des ennemis personnels, il demeura calomnie jusqu'a la fin de sa vie par ses compatriotes pour avoir ose evoquer leur sort sans l'avoir partage, jalouse et meprise par ses pairs, tout en restant peut-etre l'auteur le plus lu de la seconde moitie du vingtieme siecle et celui dont Hollywood adapta quasiment toute l'?uvre, avec plusieurs films memorables. La biographie de Hilton Tims eclaire de maniere remarquable, en la revelant a nu sans l'appauvrir, la trajectoire de cet auteur qui fut confronte directement, et qui s'opposa visceralement, aux deux tragedies que furent la Grande Guerre et le nazisme, qui lia son destin a certaines des femmes les plus flamboyantes, emouvantes et celebres de son epoque, Marlene Dietrich en tete, qui ne cessa de s'attacher a l'ecriture d'une oeuvre montrant le probleme des existences jetees dans la violence de l'histoire et sur le developpement de laquelle la gloire immediate jeta un manteau d'ombre. De la boue des tranchees aux lumieres d'Hollywood, de la pauvrete et de l'anonymat au succes mondial, du desir sans joie a la quete de la femme sublime, du gout inapaisable du bonheur, de la legerete et de la beaute a l'horreur du totalitarisme, de la solidarite avec les victimes a la detresse personnelle de l'exil et de la depression, les tourments dont l'existence et l'ecriture d'Erich Maria Remarque furent constamment hantees et brisees firent naitre en lui une conscience existentielle, politique et ethique singuliere dont les reponses furent le temoignage, l'art et l'amour. La vie exceptionnelle d'un homme dont l'oeuvre fut de resistance a l'ideologie et d'affirmation de la valeur de la vie humaine. Hilton Tims, journaliste britannique (Bristol Evening World, Daily Mail, BBC, London Evening News, The European), est l'auteur de deux romans historiques et d'une biographie de Margaret Lockwood.
