" It certainly was gripping, and some of the awkwardnesses (neologisms, clunkiness) are probably translation, but after I read the author's biography, the book fell at least a notch and a half for me. He was your ordinary Ordinary German, whose taste for addictive substances landed him in trouble with the uber folk from time to time, but mostly he wrote to please them. And he survives, quite handily. Then the war is over, and he's pleasing and appeasing his new Soviet overlords and he writes a heavy handed tale of Good Germans tragically bucking the regime and taking pity on old Jews, with some healthy socialist realist love for the worker and the peasant thrown in. At least as problematic as Irene Nemirovsky and no where as well written. "
— Elaine, 1/20/2014