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Hans Fallada

Alone in Berlin: Hans Fallada (Penguin Modern Classics) Paperback – 28 Jan. 2010

by Hans Fallada (Author), Geoff Wilkes (Afterword), Michael Hofmann (Translator)

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THE ACCLAIMED INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER

'One of the most extraordinary and compelling novels written about World War II. Ever' Alan Furst

Inspired by a true story, Hans Fallada's Alone in Berlin is a gripping wartime thriller following one ordinary man's determination to defy the tyranny of Nazi rule

Berlin, 1940, and the city is filled with fear. At the house on 55 Jablonski Strasse, its various occupants try to live under Nazi rule in their different ways: the bullying Hitler loyalists the Persickes, the retired judge Fromm and the unassuming couple Otto and Anna Quangel. Then the Quangels receive the news that their beloved son has been killed fighting in France. Shocked out of their quiet existence, they begin a silent campaign of defiance, and a deadly game of cat and mouse develops between the Quangels and the ambitious Gestapo inspector Escherich. When petty criminals Kluge and Borkhausen also become involved, deception, betrayal and murder ensue, tightening the noose around the Quangels' necks ...

This Penguin Classics edition contains an afterword by Geoff Wilkes, as well as facsimiles of the original Gestapo file which inspired the novel.

'Terrific ... a fast-moving, important and astutely deadpan thriller'
Irish Times

'An unrivalled and vivid portrait of life in wartime Berlin'
Philip Kerr

'To read Fallada's testament to the darkest years of the 20th century is to be accompanied by a wise, somber ghost who grips your shoulder and whispers into your ear: "This is how it was. This is what happened"'
The New York Times

ISBN-10

014118938X
ISBN-13

978-0141189383
Edition

1st
Publisher

Penguin Classics
Publication date

28 Jan. 2010
Language

English
Dimensions

2.79 x 12.7 x 19.56 cm
Print length

588 pages
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Product description

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 Published On: 2009-03-19

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

About the Author

Hans Fallada was one of the best-known German writers of the twentieth century. Born in 1893 in Greifswald as Rudolf Wilhelm Adolf Ditzen, he took his pen name from a Brothers Grimm fairy tale. His most famous works include the novels Little Man, What Now? and The Drinker. Fallada died from an overdose of morphine on 5 February 1947 in Berlin.

Michael Hofmann is the author of several books of poems and a book of criticism, Behind the Lines, and the translator of many modern and contemporary authors. Penguin publish his translations of Kafka's Metamorphosis and Other Stories and Irmgard Keun's Child of All Nations.

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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Classics; 1st edition (28 Jan. 2010)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 588 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 014118938X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0141189383
Reading age ‏ : ‎ Baby and up
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 2.79 x 12.7 x 19.56 cm

Best Sellers Rank: 19,882 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 1,200 in Fiction Classics (Books)
- 3,224 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- 5,165 in Contemporary Fiction (Books)

Customer reviews:
1,401 ratings

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Hans Fallada

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Before WWII, German writer Hans Fallada's novels were international bestsellers, on a par with those of his countrymen Thoman Mann and Herman Hesse. In America, Hollywood even turned his first big novel, Little Man, What Now? into a major motion picture

Learning the movie was made by a Jewish producer, however, the Nazis blocked Fallada's work from foreign rights sales, and began to pay him closer attention. When he refused to join the Nazi party he was arrested by the Gestapo--who eventually released him, but thereafter regularly summoned him for "discussions" of his work.

However, unlike Mann, Hesse, and others, Fallada refused to flee to safety, even when his British publisher, George Putnam, sent a private boat to rescue him. The pressure took its toll on Fallada, and he resorted increasingly to drugs and alcohol for relief. Not long after Goebbels ordered him to write an anti-Semitic novel he snapped and found himself imprisoned in an asylum for the "criminally insane"--considered a death sentence under Nazi rule. To forestall the inevitable, he pretended to write the assignment for Goebbels, while actually composing three encrypted books--including his tour de force novel The Drinker--in such dense code that they were not deciphered until long after his death.

Fallada outlasted the Reich and was freed at war's end. But he was a shattered man. To help him recover by putting him to work, Fallada's publisher gave him the Gestapo file of a simple, working-class couple who had resisted the Nazis. Inspired, Fallada completed Every Man Dies Alone in just twenty-four days.

He died in February 1947, just weeks before the book's publication.

Customer reviews

5 star		66%
4 star		23%
3 star		8%
2 star		2%
1 star		1%

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MissyMoonBeam

Doesn't make for easy reading....

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 7 December 2015

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It is very difficult today to find exceptional authors who write a life changing novel - may be this is because life in the 21st century, with all its technology and TV is so sterile. So I was glad I stumbled up this novel by Fallada - it kick started my brain and made me think about the lives we lead today in comparison to those lived pre-and during WWII. Living under such a regime must have been, not only extremely stressful, but terrifying and we can't imagine what impact that would have had on the lives of normal, everyday people trying to go about their business. This world is a start contrast to our own and serves to remind us of our own excesses. I won't forget this novel in a hurry, especially given that it is based on a truth that we just can't comprehend today.

The writing style is similar to that of Orwell and other writers of that time and I loved the way crafted his paragraph - switching from past tense into the present in the same paragraph, which put the reader right into the middle of the action, e.g. 'He was standing on the Pier looking into the water, just before the gun sounded. He feels a rush of blood and falls into the dark water beneath, his body swept away.......' All the characters were individuals and there were no stock characters - what I like to call 'stocking fillers' - each one had a life that had a purpose within the story told and each one was complete in his or her own right - not dependant on the actions of the other/others. Clever and timeless writing.

The subject matter was challenging and not always easy to read as you knew it wasn't fantasy. I was pleased he didn't go into graphic detail about how people were tortured - but then this didn't need to be written in - we can leave this to imagination, which in a way, can make the whole scene even more horrific.

Overall an incredible novel, but it doesn't make for easy/light reading.

63 people found this helpful

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Ann McG

Moving story based on true events.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 8 July 2018

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This is a harrowing fictional account , based on real events, of the genuine, but in the end, inneffective attempt by one ordinary couple, Otto and Anna, to resist the horrors of the Nazi regime over a three year period. It is a truly romantic tale of married love, loyalty and courage in the face of unspeakable terror. The mindless violence and cruelty is almost unbearable to read yet all the more believeable for the casual simplicity of its description. The inevitable outcome is nonetheless both heartrending and shocking, yet there is an uplifting element in the survival of the young boy Kuno and the life change he experiences.

15 people found this helpful

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H. Tee

Being alone - remaining decent against the odds.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 6 January 2017

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This is more a slow paced tale of people trying to keep decent or alive under a brutally developing tyranny. Society at all levels suspect and poison their shared thinking. We meet all types of normal people from criminals to judges, workers to bosses, husbands and wives both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ trying to work the system as best they can. Don’t expect the best plotted thriller as such more a depressing thrill of seeing the glimmers of light at the end of this notorious tunnel. We know this story, based on fact, ends in tragedy but it’s the journey you take – ones sees oneself somewhere in several characters – doubtless on reflection (at best?) most of us too would have handed in a postcard had we found one and thus we answer our own question of ‘what would I have been like and then done to stop the Nazis regime?”; we learn what average people did: few wrote cards or risked hiding dissents like Otto or the Judge - most died. Sad times and a sad book, sad sad human group-think.

A quote: “As it was, we all acted alone, we were caught alone, and every one of us will have to die alone. But that doesn’t mean we are alone, Quangel, or that our deaths are in vain. Nothing in this world is done in vain, and since we are fighting for justice against brutality, we are bound to prevail in the end”.

A fine book, it might not be as literary as similar of the era, but obviously a brilliant read. The life of the author would make a good novel too by the looks of it.

18 people found this helpful

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Mel Powell

Street level perspective, penned by an author who was there.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 6 March 2016

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Having read some mixed reviews, there seem to be two main recurrent areas of contention: is it literature or a great work? Are the characters and plot just too dull to make it worth reading? I think it is 'literature' and I didn't find it dull or boring, although, I can understand that this won't be a novel that grabs everyone. The characters are all small players on a larger stage and their individual stories arent that sensational. They are each tragic and moving; Well, I was moved. Most of the players are victims, a few are real monsters and all are caught up in the Nazi machine; wittingly and unwittingly, by varying degrees, complicit in the horror that German fascism unleashed on its own people and subsequently, the wider world. The author describes a cheerless society unraveling over two years at the tail end of WW2 via the actions of one mild middle aged couple following the death of their son at the front. This is the central plot line which all the subplots intersect. It held my interest and I think it offers a less explored, street level perspective by an author who was there. On that basis, worth reading.
Good kindle copy.

19 people found this helpful

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