num_pages: 637
description: Translated from the original German, this final volume of Victor Klemperer’s diaries opens in 1945. After the horrors of the war, Victor and Eva’s return to their Dresden home seems like a fairytale. Victor tries to resume his distinguished academic career and joins East Germany’s Communist Party. In 1951, Eva dies; a year later, aged 70, Victor marries a student—an unlikely but successful love match. But with the growing repression of the Communist Party, and the memory of those who did not survive, Victor’s achievements ring hollow. Politics, he comes to believe, is, above all, the choice of "the lesser evil." A masterpiece both of Holocaust literature and memoir.
language: English
title: The Lesser Evil: The Diaries of Victor Klemperer 1945-1959
titlecomplete: The Lesser Evil: The Diaries of Victor Klemperer 1945-1959
genres: 20th Century, History, German Literature, Biography, World War II, Autobiography, Germany, Holocaust, Diary, Nonfiction
ratings_count: 127
awards: awardedAt: 1072944000000
name: Schlegel-Tieck Prize
category: Martin Chalmers
publisher: Phoenix