Alone in Berlin

Hans Fallada

Jan 2010 · Penguin UK

About this ebook

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

Ratings and reviews

Sometimes you pick up a book that so engrosses you, that despite it’s subject matter you cannot leave it alone. You know that there will be no traditional happy ending for Otto and Anna Quangel, that respect for humanity is not high on the Gestapo’s list of priorities, that it is when and not if they are caught and then that they will face every form of torture from humiliation to being treated like a rag doll in the mouth of a rabid dog. None of this matters, or more accurately despite all of it, this book is beautiful, a quiet book of common decency, that reaches beyond the subject matter to reach a grandeur that, although of a tragic nature, still lights up bright enough to shine through the deepest of hellholes and to depict in letters large enough to be seen from the stars stating that despite all evidence to the contrary the human spirit and decency is never ever totally destroyed.

Tells the story of the fear that ordinary people lived under during the Natzi regime. How the good suffered and evil was rewarded but in the end the seeds of justice took hold and began to grow again.

For a book written in 24 days by a man who lived through an epoch of history this is a masterpiece of honesty.

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.