Alone in Berlin (Penguin Modern Classics)
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Review
Fallada assembles a cast of vivid low-life characters, stoolies, thieves and whores (James Buchan Guardian )
Visceral, chilling ... has the suspense of a Le Carré novel (New Yorker )
A classic study of a paranoid society. Fallada's scope is extraordinary. Alone in Berlin is ... as morally powerful as anything I've ever read (Charlotte Moore Telegraph )
First published in Germany in 1947 and evoking the horror of life in Germany in the Second World War. A rediscovered masterpiece that makes you want to seek out more works by this great chronicler of events in my own lifetime. (Barry Humphries, Books of the Year, Sunday Telegraph )
The other fictional high point of 2009 was Alone in Berlin ... Hans Fallada's 1947 portrait of an ordinary German couple stung into a life of protest by the death of their soldier son is harrowing and masterly. (David Robson Books of the Year, Sunday Telegraph )
[This novel] suggests that resistance to evil is rarely straightforward, mostly futile, and generally doomed. Yet to the novel's aching, unanswered question: 'Does it matter?' there is in this strange and compelling story to be found a reply in the affirmative. Primo Levi had it right: This is the great novel of German resistance. (Richard Flanagan )
'What Irène Némirovsky's "Suite Française" did for wartime France after six decades in obscurity, Fallada does for wartime Berlin.' (Roger Cohen, New York Times )
'[Alone in Berlin] has something of the horror of Conrad, the madness of Dostoyevsky and the chilling menace of Capote's "In Cold Blood"'. (Roger Cohen, New York Times )
'Fallada's great novel, beautifully translated by the poet Michael Hofmann, evokes the daily horror of life under the Third Reich, where the venom of Nazism seeped into the very pores of society, poisoning every aspect of existence. It is a story of resistance, sly humour and hope' (Ben Macintyre The Times )
'an extraordinary novel' (Daily Express )
A marvellous book, almost a masterpiece. The tension he maintains despite a fogegone conclusion is miraculous. This is the truest, most vivid I-was-there novel of the epoch. (Norman Lebrecht )
The stand-out book this year for me was Alone in Berlin (Penguin Classics £9.99) ... It's a page-turning moral thriller, based on fact, of a working-class German couple and their small-scale attempts to resist Nazi rule in Berlin. Bleak, chilling, utterly compelling and unforgettable. (Pugh Books of the Year, Daily Mail )
Penguin's reissue of Hans Fallada's Alone in Berlin, brilliantly translated by Michael Hofmann, makes available one of the great novels of the past century. An almost unbearably intense challenge to its readers. (George Steiner Books of the Year, TLS )
What makes Alone in Berlin such a cracking read is that it pushes us into the midst of that grim reality and yet allows us to put it down - only at the very end - with a feeling of warm humanity. (Peter Millar The Times )
Hans Fallada wrote Alone in Berlin between September and November 1946, in postwar East Germany. He told his family that he had written "a great novel". He would die a few months later. .... Fallada was correct: he had written a great book, in circumstances and a space of time which make the achievement almost miraculous. But it's the double miracle of translation which gives us Fallada's novel in English as Alone in Berlin. Michael Hoffman is a fine poet, whose acute ear and eloquent understanding of the transition-points between the two languages make the text as powerful as it is down-to-earth. (Helen Dunmore Guardian )
Visceral, chilling ... has the suspense of a Le Carré novel (New Yorker )
A classic study of a paranoid society. Fallada's scope is extraordinary. Alone in Berlin is ... as morally powerful as anything I've ever read (Charlotte Moore Telegraph )
First published in Germany in 1947 and evoking the horror of life in Germany in the Second World War. A rediscovered masterpiece that makes you want to seek out more works by this great chronicler of events in my own lifetime. (Barry Humphries, Books of the Year, Sunday Telegraph )
The other fictional high point of 2009 was Alone in Berlin ... Hans Fallada's 1947 portrait of an ordinary German couple stung into a life of protest by the death of their soldier son is harrowing and masterly. (David Robson Books of the Year, Sunday Telegraph )
[This novel] suggests that resistance to evil is rarely straightforward, mostly futile, and generally doomed. Yet to the novel's aching, unanswered question: 'Does it matter?' there is in this strange and compelling story to be found a reply in the affirmative. Primo Levi had it right: This is the great novel of German resistance. (Richard Flanagan )
'What Irène Némirovsky's "Suite Française" did for wartime France after six decades in obscurity, Fallada does for wartime Berlin.' (Roger Cohen, New York Times )
'[Alone in Berlin] has something of the horror of Conrad, the madness of Dostoyevsky and the chilling menace of Capote's "In Cold Blood"'. (Roger Cohen, New York Times )
'Fallada's great novel, beautifully translated by the poet Michael Hofmann, evokes the daily horror of life under the Third Reich, where the venom of Nazism seeped into the very pores of society, poisoning every aspect of existence. It is a story of resistance, sly humour and hope' (Ben Macintyre The Times )
'an extraordinary novel' (Daily Express )
A marvellous book, almost a masterpiece. The tension he maintains despite a fogegone conclusion is miraculous. This is the truest, most vivid I-was-there novel of the epoch. (Norman Lebrecht )
The stand-out book this year for me was Alone in Berlin (Penguin Classics £9.99) ... It's a page-turning moral thriller, based on fact, of a working-class German couple and their small-scale attempts to resist Nazi rule in Berlin. Bleak, chilling, utterly compelling and unforgettable. (Pugh Books of the Year, Daily Mail )
Penguin's reissue of Hans Fallada's Alone in Berlin, brilliantly translated by Michael Hofmann, makes available one of the great novels of the past century. An almost unbearably intense challenge to its readers. (George Steiner Books of the Year, TLS )
What makes Alone in Berlin such a cracking read is that it pushes us into the midst of that grim reality and yet allows us to put it down - only at the very end - with a feeling of warm humanity. (Peter Millar The Times )
Hans Fallada wrote Alone in Berlin between September and November 1946, in postwar East Germany. He told his family that he had written "a great novel". He would die a few months later. .... Fallada was correct: he had written a great book, in circumstances and a space of time which make the achievement almost miraculous. But it's the double miracle of translation which gives us Fallada's novel in English as Alone in Berlin. Michael Hoffman is a fine poet, whose acute ear and eloquent understanding of the transition-points between the two languages make the text as powerful as it is down-to-earth. (Helen Dunmore Guardian )
Review
Terrific ... a fast-moving, important and astutely deadpan thriller Irish Times One of the most extraordinary and compelling novels written about World War II. Ever Alan Furst
--This text refers to the
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
120 of 123 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This book grew on me more and more as I read it. At first I had to adjust to some of the phraseology - whether this is because it was written by a German in the 1940s or is the result of the translation I don't know. But what was remarkable about it was the way in which the characters came alive. There is a satirical edge to a couple of the characters but this works incredibly well as a counterpoint to the incidents of violence which provide a sinister insight into the minds of the Gestapo. There is no gratuitous violence as such; rather the story focuses on psychological anguish. In the last part of the book the humanity and sense of paranoia felt by the central characters (and replicated by those who find the 'postcards' in the story) is juxtapositioned with the inhumanity of the Gestapo. By the time I had finished the novel I felt as if I had been on a remarkable journey into Nazi Germany told through the lives of a small group of characters. Do read this novel.
80 of 83 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I had never heard of this novel until a few weeks ago, but it is taking book lovers by storm across the world. It is not a new book, it was published in 1947, tragically just after the author's death. But it was translated again into English last year, and I can't recommend it highly enough.
The events, based on a true story, take place in Berlin under the grip of Nazi rule. One elderly couple, Otto and Anna Quangle, learn of the death of their only son fighting in the German army, and the futility of this ending changes something inside Otto. He starts to resist the Nazi regime in a very low level but profound way. He writes postcards with subversive messages on them, asking people to question what the Nazi's are doing and what they are telling the people. He leaves them in apartment blocks and offices on stairwells for random strangers to find. He performs this task alone at first, but later his wife Anna finds out and joins him in his mission.
The Gestapo are infuriated by this postcard campaign, which goes on for over two years, and leaves them floundering in the dark looking for the culprit. The novel is a great thriller as the police try to track down who is daring to oppose the Nazi regime in such an infuriating way, and their inept attempts at investigating the crime make both gripping and amusing reading. What is remarkable for me about this book is that is shows just what a chilling effect the terrifying Nazi dictatorship had on ordinary people, who had a range of reactions to it, from enthusiastic embrace, to indifference, to resistance and defiance. And the patchwork quilt of characters that Fallada weaves into the story is rich and extensive. The tentacles of fear reach into the hearts of families and communities, making people react in gross and frightening ways. This book exposes what ordinary people suffer under brutal dictatorships, and how their behaviour is warped by their experiences, far more than any historical account could do. It is a page turner of a thriller. It is a history lesson. It is a tragedy.
And Fallada himself was a tragic figure. His real name was Rudolph Ditzen, and he died of a morphine overdose before this book was published, which was something of an accurate reflection of a life plagued as it was by mental illness and addiction. But his gem of a novel captures the terror of what it was for ordinary people to life under the shadow of the Nazis like nothing else has for me. Superb.
The events, based on a true story, take place in Berlin under the grip of Nazi rule. One elderly couple, Otto and Anna Quangle, learn of the death of their only son fighting in the German army, and the futility of this ending changes something inside Otto. He starts to resist the Nazi regime in a very low level but profound way. He writes postcards with subversive messages on them, asking people to question what the Nazi's are doing and what they are telling the people. He leaves them in apartment blocks and offices on stairwells for random strangers to find. He performs this task alone at first, but later his wife Anna finds out and joins him in his mission.
The Gestapo are infuriated by this postcard campaign, which goes on for over two years, and leaves them floundering in the dark looking for the culprit. The novel is a great thriller as the police try to track down who is daring to oppose the Nazi regime in such an infuriating way, and their inept attempts at investigating the crime make both gripping and amusing reading. What is remarkable for me about this book is that is shows just what a chilling effect the terrifying Nazi dictatorship had on ordinary people, who had a range of reactions to it, from enthusiastic embrace, to indifference, to resistance and defiance. And the patchwork quilt of characters that Fallada weaves into the story is rich and extensive. The tentacles of fear reach into the hearts of families and communities, making people react in gross and frightening ways. This book exposes what ordinary people suffer under brutal dictatorships, and how their behaviour is warped by their experiences, far more than any historical account could do. It is a page turner of a thriller. It is a history lesson. It is a tragedy.
And Fallada himself was a tragic figure. His real name was Rudolph Ditzen, and he died of a morphine overdose before this book was published, which was something of an accurate reflection of a life plagued as it was by mental illness and addiction. But his gem of a novel captures the terror of what it was for ordinary people to life under the shadow of the Nazis like nothing else has for me. Superb.
195 of 204 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This novel is nearly impossible to put down. It's an incredibly moving, gripping story based around an ordinary couple who, after the death of their only son at the front, decide to resist the Nazi regime - if only in a small, mainly symbolic way. For me its power comes from the rough, raw style - it was written in just a few short weeks shortly after the War - and the unfamiliar yet utterly believable events that eventually overtake each character. Subtly translated by the award-winning Michael Hofmann, it's a novel not to be missed if you've any interest at all in what it must have been like to live through the War in the heart of Germany.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Testament of Fear
Alone in Berlin is the story of one couple's small acts of resistance against the Nazi Regime in Germany in the early 1940's. Read more
Published 7 days ago by P. G. Harris
Tynedale Reading Group's review of 'Alone in Berlin' by Hans Fallada
NB: This review contains some `spoilers' re the plot.
`Alone in Berlin' stimulated more than four hours of discussion amongst the nine members of our Reading Group who... Read more
`Alone in Berlin' stimulated more than four hours of discussion amongst the nine members of our Reading Group who... Read more
Published 13 days ago by Joan Gibson
Very Good Very Sad
I Liked this book, though it was a difficult read. A sad tale of people in Germany during WW2. I can't say I liked the the main character I don't think you're meant to really, his... Read more
Published 13 days ago by Kate
A Masterpiece in the Depiction of Terror
This magnificent book by the German author Hans Fallada (Rudolf Wilhelm Adolf Ditzen) is a masterpiece in the depiction of the everyday terror that pervaded the Nazi Berlin of the... Read more
Published 13 days ago by Dr. R. Brandon
This excellent novel needs another translation
The only thing disturbing my enjoyment of this excellent book is the clumsy translation. The narrative moves back and forth between past and present tenses, a typically German... Read more
Published 19 days ago by Moon rabbit
"Whether their act was big or small, no one could risk more than his...
This is a true story of tremendous courage and daring in the face of danger. The story of a man and woman who defied the Nazi's by circulating postcards denouncing the war and the... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Eileen Shaw
Life under the Nazi regime for ordinary Germans
Anyone wishing to understand what life was like for ordinary Germans under the Nazi regime, should read Hans Fallada's book "Alone in Berlin" (Jeder Stirbt fur sich allein). Read more
Published 1 month ago by DRISC
A fantastic thriller and a vivid description of life during WW2 in...
Germany, 1940. A German couple is grieving the loss of their only son, killed while in combat, on the French front. Grief turns into anger. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Jose
Hans across the Ocean... well, the North Sea
An important and sad book, of course. The Nazi regime is too easily vilified as being somehow extraordinary and therefore incapable of recurring. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Sporus
quite haunting
Fallada is enjoying a bit of a revival at the moment and it's eaasy to see why. This tale is based on a true story of a couple who try to defy the Nazis by leaving anti Nazi... Read more
Published 2 months ago by Yvonne Moore
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