Arc de Triomphe

Arc de Triomphe was Remarque's second world success after All Quiet on the Western Front. The novel is one of his three major exile novels written in exile in the United States (The Night in Lisbon, Arc de Triomphe, The Black Obelisk). These three novels are considered by many to be the high points of Remarque's oeuvre. Arc de Triomphe tells the story of the gynaecologist Ravic, who escaped from the Gestapo prison in 1941 and went into hiding in dubious hotels and nightclubs in Paris. An unscrupulous French doctor likes to leave the more difficult operations on rich women and poor whores to Ravic. One day, Ravic meets an Italian singer who has just fled Mussolini's Italy. He thought that after the death of his wife he would never be able to have real feelings for anyone else, but (to his own surprise) he increasingly seeks the company of the singer. But this relationship is brutally disrupted when Ravic meets his Gestapo interrogator, the one who is also responsible for the death of Ravic's wife. He hesitates: take revenge or try to flee again? What future lies ahead for him? Is there a future at all? No one has described the emotions and consequences of exile without a way out or a future as impressively as Remarque; and there are few who have done so as concretely, compellingly and empathetically as he has.