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Nightmare in Berlin Audiobook
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Available for the first time in English, here is an unforgettable novel about the desolation of Hitler’s postwar Germany.
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.
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“Fallada describes Berlin as an almost post-apocalyptic city dominated by death, drugs, apathy, and the almost blackly comic pettiness of the human survival instinct. This translation of this compelling novel enables a new audience to experience Fallada’s fascinating and conflicted perspective.”
— Booklist
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“Has something of the horror of Conrad, the madness of Dostoevsky, and the chilling menace of Capote.”
— New York Times -
“Here was a writer whose courage was to stay behind and turn his suffering and the suffering of others into extraordinary literature.”
— Financial Times -
“Painful and poignant.”
— Daily Mail (London) -
“A gripping and brilliantly written work.”
— Berliner Zeitung -
“This is a tense, atmospheric, almost dreamlike novel, shifting between moods of despair and hope. It is rich in internal stories…bold, strident, ironic, and often ambivalent fiction.”
— Irish Times -
“I was very struck by the immediacy of Fallada’s writing in this book—it feels fresh, modern and direct…[His] ability to find glimpses of light amidst the darkness makes him a striking chronicler of his time.”
— BBC Radio 4
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About Hans Fallada
Hans Fallada (1893–1947) was the pen name of German author Rudolf Ditzen, whose books were international bestsellers on a par with those of his countrymen Thomas Mann and Hermann Hesse. He opted to stay in Germany when the Nazis came to power and eventually had a nervous breakdown when he was put under pressure to write anti-Semitic books. He was cast into a Nazi insane asylum, where he secretly wrote The Drinker. Immediately after the war, he wrote his last two novels, The Nightmare and Alone in Berlin, but died before either could be published.
About Stefan Rudnicki
Stefan Rudnicki first became involved with audiobooks in 1994. Now a Grammy-winning audiobook producer, he has worked on more than five thousand audiobooks as a narrator, writer, producer, or director. He has narrated more than nine hundred audiobooks. A recipient of multiple AudioFile Earphones Awards, he was presented the coveted Audie Award for solo narration in 2005, 2007, and 2014, and was named one of AudioFile’s Golden Voices in 2012.