Arch of Triumph

Arch of Triumph is a 1945 novel by Erich Maria Remarque about stateless refugees in Paris before World War II. Written during his exile in the United States (1939–1948), it was his second worldwide bestseller, after All Quiet on the Western Front. It was made into a feature film starring Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer in 1948 and into a television film starring Anthony Hopkins and Lesley-Anne Down in 1984. Plot The novel is set in Paris, in 1939. Despite having no permission to perform surgery, stateless refugee Ravic, a very accomplished German surgeon, has been “ghost-operating” on patients for two years on the behalf of two less-skillful French physicians. Unwilling to return to Nazi Germany, which has stripped him of his citizenship, and unable to exist legally anywhere else in pre-war western Europe, Ravic manages to hang on. He is one of many displaced persons, without passports or any other documents, who live under a constant threat of being captured and deported from one country to the next, and back again. Ravic has given up on the possibility of love, but life has a curious way of taking a turn for the romantic, even during the worst of times.