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
Rezensionen / Stimmen
One of the most extraordinary and compelling novels written about World War II. Ever. -- Alan Furst Terrific ... a fast-moving, important and astutely deadpan thriller. * Irish Times * 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 * The greatest book ever written about the German resistance to the Nazis. -- Primo Levi Fallada assembles a cast of vivid low-life characters, stoolies, thieves and whores -- James Buchan * Guardian * Visceral, chilling ... has the suspense of a Le Carre 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
Reihe
Sprache
Verlagsort
Verlagsgruppe
Produkt-Hinweis
Maße
Höhe: 198 mm
Breite: 128 mm
Dicke: 30 mm
Gewicht
ISBN-13
978-0-14-118938-3 (9780141189383)
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Schweitzer Klassifikation
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.
