Lecture
Translating War: Language, Memory, and the Legacy of “All Quiet on the Western Front”
Jan 26 — Jan 26, 2026
A Literatur Café discussion between George Packer (Journalist, The Atlantic) and Kurt Beals (Translator, Scholar of German Literature)
Kurt Beals, Visiting Associate Professor of German and Humanities Fellow in Literary Translation, University of Richmond
George Packer, Staff Writer, The Atlantic
Join us for an evening of conversation as translator Kurt Beals and journalist George Packer discuss the continuing resonance of Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front. Framed by a new English translation, the dialogue will explore how language shapes our memory of war, and why this literary classic still speaks powerfully to the present.
Literatur Café is a speaker series at Neue Galerie New York, featuring conversations on literature, translation, the art of writing, and literary reception. This event will take place in the Klimt Gallery on the second floor of the museum. All Quiet on the Western Front will be available for purchase. You may bring your own or purchase a copy of the featured book and have it signed.
About the Speakers
About the Book
Until now, one translation—published in 1929, and very much a product of its time—has introduced most readers in English to Erich Maria Remarque's wrenching portrait of the horrors of trench warfare. Now, nearly a century later, renowned translator Kurt Beals recaptures the energy and descriptive force of the German original, rendering Remarque's distinctly terse, telegraphic prose into a contemporary idiom, conveying for a new generation the immediacy and intensity of this classic novel.
About the Book
Until now, one translation—published in 1929, and very much a product of its time—has introduced most readers in English to Erich Maria Remarque's wrenching portrait of the horrors of trench warfare. Now, nearly a century later, renowned translator Kurt Beals recaptures the energy and descriptive force of the German original, rendering Remarque's distinctly terse, telegraphic prose into a contemporary idiom, conveying for a new generation the immediacy and intensity of this classic novel.