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Nightmare in Berlin by Hans Fallada
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Nightmare in Berlin

$17.96

Retail price: $19.95

Discount: 9%

This title is not eligible for purchase with membership credits. Why?

Narrator Stefan Rudnicki

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Translator Allan Blunden
Length 8 hours 26 minutes
Language English
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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.

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.

Stefan Rudnicki is an award winning audiobook narrator, director and producer. He was born in Poland and now resides in Studio City, California. He has narrated more than three hundred audiobooks and has participated in over a thousand as a writer, producer, or director. He is a recipient of multiple Audie Awards and AudioFile Earphones Awards as well as a Grammy Award, a Bram Stoker Award, and a Ray Bradbury Award. He received AudioFile’s award for 2008 Best Voice in Science Fiction and Fantasy. Along with a cast of other narrators, Rudnicki has read a number of Orson Scott Card's best-selling science fiction novels. He worked extensively with many other science fiction authors, including David Weber and Ben Bova. In reviewing the twentieth anniversary edition audiobook of Card’s Ender's Game, Publishers Weekly stated, "Rudnicki, with his lulling, sonorous voice, does a fine job articulating Ender's inner struggle between the kind, peaceful boy he wants to be and the savage, violent actions he is frequently forced to take." Rudnicki is also a stage actor and director.

Allan Blunden is a British translator who specializes in German literature. He is best known for his translation of Erhard Eppler’s The Return of the State? which won the Schlegel-Tieck Prize. He has also translated biographies of Heidegger and Stefan Zweig.

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Reviews

“Has something of the horror of Conrad, the madness of Dostoevsky, and the chilling menace of Capote.”

“Here was a writer whose courage was to stay behind and turn his suffering and the suffering of others into extraordinary literature.”

“Painful and poignant.”

“A gripping and brilliantly written work.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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Celebrate indie bookstores with our limited-time sale! Shop the sale