ALONE IN BERLIN: Hans Fallada (Penguin Modern Classics) - Softcover

Fallada assembles a cast of vivid low-life characters, stoolies, thieves and whores (James Buchan Guardian)

Visceral, chilling ... has the suspense of a Le Carré novel (New Yorker)

A classic study of a paranoid society. Fallada's scope is extraordinary. Alone in Berlin is ... as morally powerful as anything I've ever read (Charlotte Moore Telegraph 2009-03-19)

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)

The other fictional high point of 2009 was Alone in Berlin ... Hans Fallada's 1947 portrait of an ordinary German couple stung into a life of protest by the death of their soldier son is harrowing and masterly. (David Robson Books of the Year, Sunday Telegraph)

[This novel] suggests that resistance to evil is rarely straightforward, mostly futile, and generally doomed. Yet to the novel's aching, unanswered question: 'Does it matter?' there is in this strange and compelling story to be found a reply in the affirmative. Primo Levi had it right: This is the great novel of German resistance. (Richard Flanagan)

'What Irène Némirovsky's "Suite Française" did for wartime France after six decades in obscurity, Fallada does for wartime Berlin.' (Roger Cohen, New York Times)

'[Alone in Berlin] has something of the horror of Conrad, the madness of Dostoyevsky and the chilling menace of Capote's "In Cold Blood"'. (Roger Cohen, New York Times)

'Fallada's great novel, beautifully translated by the poet Michael Hofmann, evokes the daily horror of life under the Third Reich, where the venom of Nazism seeped into the very pores of society, poisoning every aspect of existence. It is a story of resistance, sly humour and hope' (Ben Macintyre The Times)

'an extraordinary novel' (Daily Express)