Cannyminds Blog

Alone in Berlin

Posted on 05. Feb, 2010 by Jenny in Reading Group

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 )

It’s 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…

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