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 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).

Author: Anonymous
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Picador USA
Published: 07/11/2006
Pages: 288
Weight: 0.55lbs
Size: 8.20h x 5.40w x 0.80d
ISBN: 9780312426118


Review Citation(s):
New York Times 09/17/2006 pg. 32

About the Author
The anonymous author of A Woman in Berlin was a young woman at the time of the fall of Berlin. She was a journalist and editor during and after the war.