Après
One of 111 réimposé copies, this one of 18 deluxe copies on Japanese paper (no. CVI).
This is the first title in a collection destined for a great future: the foreign literature list of Éditions Gallimard, the “Du Monde entier” collection. Après would be the only title in the regular “blanche” collection to have this double edition, with a numbered printing of 209 deluxe-paper copies (18 on Japanese paper, 80 on Holland paper, 111 on vergé), followed by a printing of 1,500 on alfa paper for the “grise” collection, that of Du Monde entier.
The son of a bookbinder, Remarque trained to become a schoolteacher before being called up for military service. After the war, he worked at various jobs — accountant, salesman, journalist, editor of a sports magazine. In 1929, Remarque became suddenly famous through the enormous success of his first novel, All Quiet on the Western Front: translated into twenty-five languages, the book reached a print run of 3.5 million copies within eighteen months, nearly a million of them in Germany alone. This national fame proved short-lived: the pacifist Remarque settled in Ascona, Switzerland, in 1931, while his books were burned by the Nazis and he was stripped of his German citizenship. All his subsequent work would forcefully denounce militarism, war and dictatorship.