The Night in Lisbon – Erich Maria Remarque
Erich Maria Remarque’s final completed novel is a haunting, nocturnal tale of exile, love, and desperation set against the backdrop of World War II. In the rain-soaked streets of Lisbon—a fragile haven for refugees fleeing Nazi-occupied Europe—an unnamed narrator meets Josef Schwarz, a German deserter who offers him two precious steamship tickets to America in exchange for listening to his story.
Over one sleepless night in a dimly lit café, Schwarz recounts his harrowing journey: his escape from a Gestapo prison, his reunion with Helen, the wife he thought dead, and their doomed flight across borders, pursued by war and their own ghosts. Remarque’s prose, spare yet lyrical, strips survival to its rawest nerves—love as both salvation and burden, freedom as an illusion chipped away by bureaucracy and betrayal.
A lesser-known gem in Remarque’s oeuvre, The Night in Lisbon distills the themes of his classics (All Quiet on the Western Front, Arch of Triumph) into a single, breathless confession. The novel’s power lies in its quiet moments: a shared cigarette, a train compartment’s silence, the way dawn breaks over Lisbon’s harbor like a reprieve that comes too late.
“Not just a war story, but a midnight psalm for the dispossessed—where every passport is a eulogy.”
