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Nightmare in Berlin

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Nightmare in Berlin

By: Hans Fallada, Allan Blunden - translator
Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
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About this listen

Available for the first time in English, here is an unforgettable novel about the desolation of postwar Germany after Hitler.

The war is over, yet Dr. Doll, a loner and "moderate pessimist", lives in constant fear. By night, he is still 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 northeast Germany that has been occupied by the Red Army.

Dr. Doll flees this place 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.

Nightmare in Berlin captures the demoralized and desperate atmosphere of postwar Germany in a way that has never been matched or surpassed.

©2017 Blackstone Audio, Inc. (P)2017 Blackstone Audio, Inc. Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction War Emotionally Gripping Red army

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All stars
Most relevant  
A m a z i n g w o r k ! Bridge then and now

❤️

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After 'Alone in Berlin' I had very high expectations for this audiobook. Unfortunately the bleakness of this post-war period and the fixations of the main characters did not make, for me , a very engaging tale. Stuck with it to the end hoping for better things that did not materialise. In the postscript you learn that the tale and its writing were heavily autobiographical of the authors own health issues and addiction.

Post war Berlin

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Solely due to the translation, I found this book hard to get into at times. It's worth sticking with though.

It gives the reader a very different impression of the German people during the end of WW2 and into the first year after the war.

A depressed time, full of negative thought, utter devistated landscape and total collapse of normality.

It must have been an extremely difficult book to write at that time.

It's hardly an enjoyable subject, but it's a subject worth listening too.

Hard To Get Into.

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The story is not bad, very interesting but sometimes slow.. The German soul after the war, their thoughts, their fears, their beliefs.. Fallada describes them well. The narrator makes the listening tough at times, but overall was good.

Optimism after a war

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The end of the war in Germany, the arrival of the Russians and the stuttering attempts to restart life in a defeated, demoralised populace. At the centre of all this is a quasi-autobiographical tale of an author and his wife variously suffering from clinical depression and drug dependency trying to rebuild their own shattered lives—shot through with shafts of sunlight and warmth against a background of futility and despair. It is a dark, sensitive, moving account of coming to terms with new realities.

Perceptive and moving account of coming to terms with new realities

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I can’t honestly say whether or not this is a good book, because the narration was so awful I gave up on it.
Dull, monotone, robotic and just not in keeping with what I imagine would suit this story.

Sorry, but the narration…….

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