num_pages: 261
description: An astonishing find-the landmark journal of a woman living though the Russian occupation of Berlin-which has already earned comparisons to diaries by Etty Hillesum and Victor KlempererFor six weeks in 1945, as Berlin fell to the Russian army, a young woman, alone in the city, kept a daily record of her and her neighbors' experiences, determined to describe the common lot of millions.Purged of all self-pity but with laser-sharp observation and bracing humor, the anonymous author conjures up a ravaged apartment building and its little group of residents struggling to get by in the rubble without food, heat, or water. Clear-eyed and unsentimental, she depicts her fellow Berliners in all their humanity as well as their cravenness, corrupted first by hunger and then by the Russians. And with shocking and vivid detail, she tells of the shameful indignities to which women in a conquered city are always the mass rape suffered by all, regardless of age or infirmity. Through this ordeal, she maintains her resilience, decency, and fierce will to come through her city's trial, until normalcy and safety return.At once an essential record and a work of great literature, A Woman in Berlin not only reveals a true heroine, sure to join other enduring figures of the twentieth century, but also gives voice to the rarely heard victims of the women.
language: English
title: A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City--A Diary
titlecomplete: A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City--A Diary
genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Germany, Biography Memoir, German Literature, Biography, War, History, World War II, Historical
ratings_count: 14787
places: Berlin
awards: awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: Schlegel-Tieck Prize
category: Philip Boehm
publisher: Metropolitan Books