1923. The year of the great inflation. The era of speculators and swindlers, public servants and big merchants, poor pensioners and war veterans - a society in disintegration. An entire generation learned in the bitterest way to survive without a future and vision. Like so many others, Ludwig lost his youth in World War I and no longer knows where he belongs. Searching for love and trying to find his place in life, he encounters on his way the beautiful but schizophrenic Isabelle...

With this novel, which deals with a delayed youth, Remarque becomes the chronicler of the wild and tumultuous 1920s, with economic scandals and the first nationalist outbursts - an era caught between the two great disasters of the 20th century.