Nightmare in Berlin

Description

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.

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.

"Here was a writer whose courage was to stay behind and turn his suffering and the suffering of others into extraordinary literature." --Financial Times "Fallada describes Berlin as an almost post-apocalyptic city dominated by death, drugs, apathy, and the almost blackly comic pettiness of the human survival instinct. This translation of this compelling novel enables a new audience to experience Fallada's fascinating and conflicted perspective." --Booklist "Has something of the horror of Conrad, the madness of Dostoyevsky, and the chilling menace of Capote." --The New York Times on Every Man Dies Alone "A densely packed chronicle that is of both literary and historical value...That this is furthermore a gripping and brilliantly written work goes without saying." --Berliner Zeitung "In this splendid novel, Fallada portrays the despondency and apathy of the German people in this strange period. The last months of the war are described with masterly skill, as well as the subsequent capitulation, the arrival of the Russian troops, the way in which the middle class, the "bourgeoisie" must adapt to this new environment, and the moral decline of the population." --Zwiebelfisch "It's easy to see why Graham Greene--no small master of moral thrillers himself--so admired this writer." PICK OF THE WEEK --Cameron Woodhead, Sydney Morning Herald "Nightmare in Berlin is the symbol for everything that happened after the end of the war." --Der Tagesspiegel "Nightmare in Berlin represents a crucial moment in Fallada's realisation that it is not the ruins, but human lives that count." --Norddeutsche Zeitung "A strikingly honest book, a piece of human history." --Frankfurter Neue Presse "One reads the story of Dr Doll, who is crushed by a nightmarish existence in a city of ruins, with intense sympathy." --Freiheit Dusseldorf "The book that cleared the way for Alone in Berlin." --Jenny Williams, author of More Lives Than One: a biography of Hans Fallada "A vital, painful examination of a devastated, morally bereft city." --The Listener "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' "[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 "A tale of survival in [post-war Berlin]'s ruins." --The Sunday Times "[Fallada] digs deep into -the human psyche to explore guilt--both collective and individual--and the battle to stay sane while surrounded by chaos...[His] character studies and local colour--whether of gritty cityscape or lurid dreamscape--prove consistently captivating...A mesmerising portrait of shattered lives." --The National "Painful and poignant." --Elizabeth Buchan, Daily Mail "This is a tense, atmospheric, almost dreamlike novel, shifting between moods of despair and hope. It is rich in internal stories...bold, strident, ironic and often ambivalent fiction." --Eileen Battersby, The Irish Times "[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 "[Nightmare in Berlin] evokes the apathy and despair of postwar Germany with chilling resonance and the author's trademark humanity." --Eileen Battersby, The Irish Times "Records in powerful detail the reality of life for Germans living in a defeated and occupied country." --The Mail on Sunday "A compressed epic of despair, venality, shame, and endurance, this "strong book about a weak human being", like most Fallada novels, mirrors its author's travails...The novel is driven by these surges of emotion, but Fallada keeps our gaze on everyday details, on petty betrayals and intimate crimes...Fallada's corrosive wit--used sparingly in this novel and to devastating effect--is oddly affecting. It draws us closer to these characters even as they surrender to the oblivion of morphine or to the macabre regimen of the sanatorium..."Life goes on, always", he concludes. But Fallada's tightly constructed novel--a snug nesting doll of horror within horror--makes even that bland assertion seem foolish." --Anna Mundow, The Barnes & Noble Review