A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City: A Diary Audiobook

Quotes

• “Narrator Isabel Keating manages to convey the frustration, hunger, depression, and exhaustion faced by the author, a journalist, who somehow manages to maintain her sanity despite several rapes and a diet of potatoes and nettles…A Woman in Berlin ranks as one of the great historical diaries. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.”

  — AudioFile

• "A WOMAN IN BERLIN ranks as one of the great historical diaries.

  — AudioFile Earphones Award

• A devastating book. It is matter-of-fact, makes no attempt to score political points, does not attempt to solicit sympathy for its protagonist, and yet is among the most chilling indictments of war I have ever read. Everybody, in particular every woman, ought to read it.

  — Arundhati Roy, Booker Prize-winning author of The God of Small Things

• A tract essential for our often morally fuzzy times . . . It is destined to be a classic.

  — San Francisco Chronicle

• Let Anonymous stand witness as she wished to: as an undistorted voice for all women in war and its aftermath, whatever their names or nation or ethnicity. Anywhere.

  — Los Angeles Times

• An astonishing record of survival . . . the voice of Anonymous emerges as both shrewd and funny . . . a fresh contribution to the literature of war.

  — Entertainment Weekly (grade: A)

• A richly detailed, clear-eyed account of the effects of war and enemy occupation on a civilian population . . . She has written, in short, a work of literature, rich in character and perception.

  — Joseph Kanon, The New York Times Book Review

• Her journal earns a particular place in the archives of recollection. This is because it neither condemns nor forgives: not her countrymen, not her occupiers, and not, remarkably, herself. . . . Stands gritty and obdurate among a swirl of revisionist currents that variously have asserted and disputed the inherent nature of Germans' national guilt . . .To put it briefly, Anonymous writes a merciless account of what individuals can be faced with when all material and social props collapse.

  — The Boston Globe

• A riveting account of a military atrocity . . . The author doesn't try to explain or moralize the horror. She simply records it as perhaps no one else has, in all of its devastating essence.

  — The New York Observer

• Unflinchingly honest . . . Its frank documentation of German suffering--the hunger and uncertainty as well as the widespread rape--illuminates a subject whose worldwide taboo is just beginning to subside.

  — The Village Voice

• A brilliant and powerful work.

  — Newsday

• What makes the book an essential document is its frank and unself-conscious record of the physical and moral devastation that accompanied the war. . . . The diarist's emotional register remains unfailingly calm. Her dispassionate chronicle of the disasters of war suggests a kind of stoic heroism. . . . Remarkable.

  — Salon.com

• A stunning account of a German woman's battle to survive repeated rape at the hands of the victors among the ruins of Berlin . . . While leaders plot their dreams of glory and victory, the lives of ordinary people--on all sides--are trampled and destroyed. A most salutary work.

  — David Hare, The Guardian (U.K.)

• The author has a fierce, uncompromising voice, and her book should become a classic of war literature.

  — Publishers Weekly

• Books can transform us. So very few do. A Woman in Berlin is one that can.

  — Dayton Daily News

• A work of great power . . . The author is a keen observer of the ironies, even the absurdities, of a collapsing society. . . . A devastating and rare glimpse at ordinary people who struggle to survive.

  — Booklist

• With the passage of time, Anonymous's perspective--and the extraordinary way she kept her dignity and moral sense alive in an inferno--have made her diary a war classic.

  — Maclean's (Toronto)

• Marvelous . . . As it is a human instinct to survive, this book, which could have been horrifying, is instead exhilarating: a rare tribute to the human spirit.

  — Daily Mail (U.K.)

• Coolly written, tearingly honest . . . This is a classic not only of war literature but also of writing at the very extreme of human suffering.

  — The Daily Telegraph (London)