Undoubtedly, the romantic story between Robbie and Patricia touched the hearts of many young Albanians during communism time. "Totalitarian systems that favor a melancholic closure of the self. The aesthetic moment becomes a means of distancing oneself from the world." — a phrase written on one of the walls of the exhibition "Melancholy: Genius and Madness in the West" — opened in Paris a few years ago. But this could not have been the only reason, as other romantic books were also circulating in Albania.

It is known that a text has as many readings as readers, but the reading that the Albanian reader of the dictatorship years gave to this novel must be one of the greatest paradoxes. Unlike the author who wanted to show the story of three friends spiritually killed by the First World War and trying to survive the crisis years in Weimar Germany, the Albanian reader of those years saw and perceived Remarque’s "Three Comrades" more like a novel of a free life. The book's characters had their own car (a symbol of individual freedom); they could drink cognac and other drinks without anyone saying anything to them or being looked at askance by party comrades (the glass of cognac on the table at Café Flora or the cafe of the Culture Palace in Tirana was seen at that time as the image of a modern life); they could live separately from their families without being condemned by public opinion as happened to people who lived in Tirana at that time; they could love freely without feeling the weight of the Party and family. The strict communist "morality" had reinforced the traditional Balkan morality. The numerous divorces that occurred in the 1990s, right after the fall of communism, showed the weight of this oppression; they were an expression of these forced relationships.

Some young people identified their situation under the dictatorship with that of the lost generation. Even those who had not directly felt the class struggle. Unlike the exotic settings of Hemingway's novels (another representative of the lost generation authors), the events in "Three Comrades" took place in a popular urban setting (gas stations, bars, cafes, modest apartments, etc.). This atmosphere made identification with the characters easier.

The book "Three Comrades" was a novel of a sad atmosphere, of an atmosphere that actually existed in Enver Hoxha's Albania, but which Albanian readers could not find in any socialist realism novel. Not only in novels, but in no artistic work of that time; be they theatrical, cinematographic, pictorial, musical, etc. The novel "Three Comrades" was similar to those realistic song texts written in simple words that can move you to tears when you happen to hear them alone inside an empty café on a rainy day, somewhere in the outskirts. The novel "Three Comrades" was also a novel of these missing words.

Perhaps this is why this book connected with the Albanian reader. The fact that it lost that appeal after the fall of the dictatorship reinforces this hypothesis. In fact, for some of the former readers, Remarque is no longer one of the greatest writers. After the fall of communism, we had the opportunity to read other authors, that were strictly forbidden by the communists, that made us realize that Remarque was not the modern author people once boasted about in their conversations, in the great prison called the People's Republic of Albania.

It is not a coincidence that Remarque's books were burned by the Nazis and banned (another kind of burning) by the communists, because they spoke to people and not to ideological concepts like the New Communist Man or the New Nazi Man. Therefore, it is not surprising that in dictatorial regimes we will find the same expressions such as "degenerate art", "banned authors", etc.

However, this book remains an object that still evokes emotions in me today. It was the companion of sad twilights when I walked the streets of Tirana, gripped by darkness and fear, with my only pair of lace-up shoes that, even though repaired several times, could not protect my feet from the rain...