Arch of Triumph (novel)

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.

• Ravic (real name Ludwig Fresenburg) – a refugee surgeon from Germany who has no citizenship.
• Joan Madou – actress, singer. Her father is Romanian, her mother is Italian.
• Haake – a German Gestapo man who tortured Ravic and committed his beloved girl Sibylla to suicide.
• Veber – a gynecologist from the Durand Clinic, Comrade Ravic.
• Durant – the famous doctor, the owner of the clinic. A good diagnostician but a poor surgeon, he hires other doctors who operate on patients instead of him.
• Kate Hegstrom – an American, Ravic's first patient, sick with inoperable cancer.
• Boris Morosow – a tall and strong 60-year-old bearded man, an émigré from Russia; there is a porter at the Scheherazade establishment. Dreams of revenge against the communists who tortured his father.
• Aaron Goldberg – Ravich's neighbor at the 'Internationale' Hotel.
• Ruth Goldberg – the wife of Aaron Goldberg.
• Ernst Zeylenbaum – Doctor of Philology and Philosophy, an illegal migrant, lived for six years at the 'Internationale'.
• Rosenfeld – an emigrant who sells unique paintings (Van Gogh, Cézanne, Gauguin, Sisley, Renoir, Delacroix) to survive.
• Jeannot – a 13-year-old boy who had his leg amputated after an accident.
• Lucienne – unsuccessfully performed an abortion with a non-professional midwife, and then went to the clinic, where she was operated on by Ravic.
• Rolande – a brothel manager, acquaintance of Ravic since he comes to give examinations to the prostitutes in his capacity as doctor.

Remarque's earlier novel, Flotsam, is also about the lives of stateless individuals. The character Ravic makes brief appearances in three of Remarque's other novels: Shadows in Paradise, The Promised Land and Game.