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japple

(10,425 posts)
10. Finally finished Ivy Pochoda's Visitation Street and recommend it. Am looking forward to reading
Sun Jan 7, 2018, 06:57 PM
Jan 2018

her book, Wonder Valley when it becomes available at the library.

I downloaded an oldie. Hans Fallada's book, Every Man Dies Alone. Here's a bit from a review I found online.

About the author: Before WWII, German writer Hans Fallada's novels were international bestsellers, on a par with those of his countrymen Thoman Mann and Herman Hesse. In America, Hollywood even turned his first big novel, Little Man, What Now? into a major motion picture

Learning the movie was made by a Jewish producer, however, the Nazis blocked Fallada's work from foreign rights sales, and began to pay him closer attention. When he refused to join the Nazi party he was arrested by the Gestapo--who eventually released him, but thereafter regularly summoned him for "discussions" of his work.

However, unlike Mann, Hesse, and others, Fallada refused to flee to safety, even when his British publisher, George Putnam, sent a private boat to rescue him. The pressure took its toll on Fallada, and he resorted increasingly to drugs and alcohol for relief. Not long after Goebbels ordered him to write an anti-Semitic novel he snapped and found himself imprisoned in an asylum for the "criminally insane"--considered a death sentence under Nazi rule. To forestall the inevitable, he pretended to write the assignment for Goebbels, while actually composing three encrypted books--including his tour de force novel The Drinker--in such dense code that they were not deciphered until long after his death.

Fallada outlasted the Reich and was freed at war's end. But he was a shattered man. To help him recover by putting him to work, Fallada's publisher gave him the Gestapo file of a simple, working-class couple who had resisted the Nazis. Inspired, Fallada completed Every Man Dies Alone in just twenty-four days.

He died in February 1947, just weeks before the book's publication.

Here's a link to the movie based on the book:
The movie: https://www.amazon.com/Alone-Berlin-Emma-Thompson/dp/B06XJ1QWCG/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1515365932&sr=1-1&keywords=alone+in+berlin+dvd

Recommendations

0 members have recommended this reply (displayed in chronological order):

"Fire and Fury" on audiobook shenmue Jan 2018 #1
Ditto nt avebury Jan 2018 #2
Squee! shenmue Jan 2018 #3
Yeah hermetic Jan 2018 #4
Kieran Smith, boy by James Kelman PoorMonger Jan 2018 #5
I just found hermetic Jan 2018 #8
Just finished, PoorMonger Jan 2018 #19
I am reading murielm99 Jan 2018 #6
Yes, I remember hermetic Jan 2018 #7
"Fire And Fury" of course PJMcK Jan 2018 #9
Finally finished Ivy Pochoda's Visitation Street and recommend it. Am looking forward to reading japple Jan 2018 #10
Gosh, Fallada sounds like an amazing man hermetic Jan 2018 #13
Even though I do most of my reading on e-books, I was very happy to find that most of japple Jan 2018 #14
A Wrinkle in Time and The Goldfinch Cuthbert Allgood Jan 2018 #11
The Goldfinch hermetic Jan 2018 #15
Goldfinch is on back burner because I got a reserve copy of Underground Railroad Cuthbert Allgood Jan 2018 #18
The Art of Detection by Laurie R. king PennyK Jan 2018 #12
Nice hermetic Jan 2018 #16
Wonderful PennyK Jan 2018 #17
Gone To Dust by Matt Goldman PoorMonger Jan 2018 #20
Cool! hermetic Jan 2018 #21
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