A Woman in Berlin
“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
An ALA Notable Book for 2006
AudioFile Earphones Award Winner
New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice
Winner of ALA Notable Books - Winner, 2006
Winner of ALA Notable Books - Winner, 2006
Winner of ALA Notable Books - Winner, 2006
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
For eight weeks in 1945, as Berlin fell to the Russian army, a young woman kept a daily record of life in her apartment building and among its residents. "With bald honesty and brutal lyricism" (Elle), the anonymous author depicts her fellow Berliners in all their humanity, as well as their cravenness, corrupted first by hunger and then by the Russians. "Spare and unpredictable, minutely observed and utterly free of self-pity" (The Plain Dealer, Cleveland), A Woman in Berlin tells of the complex World War II relationship between civilians and an occupying army and the shameful indignities to which women in a conquered city are always subject--the mass rape suffered by all, regardless of age or infirmity.
A Woman in Berlin stands as "one of the essential books for understanding war and life" (A. S. Byatt, author of Possession).
Praise