Another of my father-in-law’s little homing pigeon book orders showed up at the house, a 1941 American Book Company edition in German of Erich Maria Remarque’s 1936 novel “Three Comrades”. 

I wrote a review of it after reading in 2017: 

“A despairing narrative of Weimar Germany, almost a mirror of contemporaneous Jazz Age American novels like The Great Gatsby — the same hopeless relief of passing through the Great War, the same unmoored fellowship of youth desperate to forget itself in moments of violent hedonism, the same backdrop of alcohol, automobiles, dissolution, and sumptuous frenzy. The preoccupation with the speed and power of the automobile is especially notable. 

The difference between Three Comrades and its American analogs is one of material poverty. Three Comrades stands apart from its Jazz Age peers in presenting a tableau of crushing poverty. Equally distinct are the themes of suicide, sickness, and prostitution attending the misery of the Weimar period. 

The eponymous three comrades stand together, symbols of unity against the chaos of the world to come. 

Given Remarque's self-imposed exile from National Socialist Germany, would be curious to know more about his process of conceiving and creating this novel, first published in 1936.”