Nightmare in Berlin - Hardcover

Fallada, Hans

3.82

1,245 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 192522838X ISBN 13: 9781925228380

Publisher: Scribe UK, 2016

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Available for the first time in English, here is an unforgettable portrayal by a master novelist of the physical and psychological devastation wrought in the homeland by Hitler s war.

Late April, 1945. The war is over, yet Dr Doll, a loner and moderate pessimist , lives in constant fear. By night, he is haunted by nightmarish images of the bombsite in which he is trapped he, and the rest of Germany. More than anything, he wishes to vanquish the demon of collective guilt, but he is unable to right any wrongs, especially in his position as mayor of a small town in north-east Germany that has been occupied by the Red Army.

Dr Doll flees for Berlin, where he finds escape in a morphine addiction: each dose is a small death . He tries to make his way in the chaos of a city torn apart by war, accompanied by his young wife, who shares his addiction. Fighting to save two lives, he tentatively begins to believe in a better future.

Written with Fallada s distinctive power and vividness, Nightmare in Berlin captures the demoralised and desperate atmosphere of post-war Germany in a way that has never been matched or surpassed.

The translation of this work was supported by a grant from the Goethe-Institut which is funded by the German Ministry of the Arts.

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Review:

'I was very struck by the immediacy of Fallada's writing in this book - it feels fresh, modern and direct ... [his] ability to find glimpses of light amidst the darkness makes him a striking chronicler of his time.' --Mariella Frostrup , BBC Radio 4 'Open Book'

'[Nightmare in Berlin] begins in gripping style and is fascinating on the mentality of a population brought to its knees.' --Anthony Gardner, The Mail on Sunday

'[Fallada's] account of the agonized internal conflict of a writer, torn between the self-protective instinct to detach himself from the horror that surrounds him and the imperative to bear witness to it, has the appalled urgency of confession with little hope of absolution. Rawer and more unevenly wrought than Alone in Berlin, Nightmare in Berlin is the necessary precursor to that great work.' --New Statesman

About the Author:

Hans Fallada (1893 1947) was the pen name of German author Rudolf Ditzen, whose books were international bestsellers on a par with those of his countrymen Thomas Mann and Hermann Hesse. He opted to stay in Germany when the Nazis came to power, and eventually had a nervous breakdown when he was put under pressure to write anti-Semitic books. He was cast into a Nazi insane asylum, where he secretly wrote The Drinker. Immediately after the war he wrote his last two novels, The Nightmare and Alone in Berlin, but he died before either book could be published.

Dr Allan Blunden is a British translator who specialises in German literature. He is best known for his translation of Erhard Eppler s The Return of the State? which won the Schlegel-Tieck Prize. He has also translated biographies of Heidegger and Stefan Zweig, and the prison diary of Hans Fallada.

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