This is the best book I have read in a long time, and certainly the best book I have read about the experience of everyday Germans during WWII (and I think 'The Book Thier' is an exceptionally good book--this one is better though). Do not be put off by the title--while the book takes place during a totalitarian regime, where loyalty to the state is inordinately rewarded, and the baser elements of human behavior are rewarded and kindness is punished, it is not a depressing book to read. There is an undercurrent of hope and humor that runs just underneath the dark story that buoys it up in a way that makes is easy to read. Don't get me wrong, hardly anyone gets out of this book alive. It is not light reading. The quote from Primo Levi, that this is the best account of resistance to Hitler's regime written, is misleading i think. I think this is a book about how to maintain your humanity, your sanity even, in an inhumane situation. These situations exist today--Afghanistan being one that immediately comes to mind--so there is much we can learn from the past.
The author is as enigmatic as the book--how did he write something so devastating and yet so readable? Born Rudolph Dietzen, he changed his name because of the infamy he gained after killing a friend in a duel as a teenager. He became a well known German writer, despite his life-long struggle with drugs and alcohol. He died of a morphine overdose before this book was published. He wrote this book in less than a month, based on the Gestapo files of a real couple who conducted a similar campaign of subtle resistance. It is a remarkably interwoven and complex book and to think he poured it out of himself in such a short period of time is even more remarkable. It was published in East Germany in 1947, but this is the first translation in English. I don't know what took so long, but this is a masterpiece.
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