Heaven Has No Favorites

The sky knows no favorites is a novel by German author Erich Maria Remarque. The story is about love, passion and fear of death. It first appeared in 1959 as a series of novels in the Hamburg magazine Kristall entitled " Borrowed Life". In 1961 the story in book form.

Action

The main character, Clerfayt, is an auto racing driver who visits an injured colleagues in a Swiss hospital. There he meets Lillian, a young Belgian woman who suffers from tuberculosis.

It is in the final stage of the disease with no chance of recovery and wants to enjoy the last months of her life and not spend in the hospital bed. She leaves her boyfriend Boris and goes with Clerfayt to Paris. Together with Clerfayt she travels through Europe and making new experiences.

Clerfayt falls in love with it and continue auto racing. Clerfayt expresses that he wants to settle down together domesticated with Lillian, but she refuses,. In a race Clerfayt is seriously injured and dies in hospital. Lillian returns to Switzerland back to the sanatorium and spends the rest of the time with Boris. She died six weeks later.

Filming

Sydney Pollack filmed the story in 1977 very freely under the title " Bobby Deerfield ," starring Al Pacino as a car racer Bobby Deerfield and Marthe Keller as Lillian Morelli.