Author: Helga Schneider
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1448163811
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 227
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Book Description
Abandoned by her mother, who left to pursue a career as a camp guard at Auschwitz-Birkenau, loathed by her step-mother, cooped up in a cellar, starved, parched, lonely amidst the fetid crush of her neighbours, Helga Schneider endured the horrors of wartime Berlin. The Bonfire of Berlin is a searing account of her survival. The grinding misery of hunger, combined with the terror of air-raids, the absence of fresh water and the constant threat of death and disease served not to unite the tenants and neighbours of her apartment block but rather to intensify the minor irritations of communal life into flashpoints of rage and violence. And with Russian victory the survivors could not look forward a return to peacetime but rather to pillage and rape. It was only gradually that Schneider's life returned to some kind of normality, as her beloved father returned from the front, carrying his own scars of the war. This shocking book evokes the reality of life in a wartime city in all its brutality and deprivation, while retaining a kernel of hope that while life remains not all is lost.
Author: Helga Schneider
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1448180406
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 95
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Book Description
When Helga Schneider was four, her mother, Traudi, abandoned her to pursue her career. In 1998, Helga received a letter asking her to visit Traudi, now 90-years old, before she dies. Mother and daughter have met only once after Traudi left, on a disastrous visit where Helga first learnt the terrible secret of her mother's past. Traudi was as an extermination guard in Auschwitz and Ravensbruck and was involved in Nazi 'medical' experiments on prisoners. She has never expressed even the slightest remorse for her actions, yet Helga still hopes that at this final meeting she will find some way to forgive her mother.
Author: Richard Ovenden
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674241207
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 321
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Book Description
The director of the famed Bodleian Libraries at Oxford narrates the global history of the willful destruction—and surprising survival—of recorded knowledge over the past three millennia. Libraries and archives have been attacked since ancient times but have been especially threatened in the modern era. Today the knowledge they safeguard faces purposeful destruction and willful neglect; deprived of funding, libraries are fighting for their very existence. Burning the Books recounts the history that brought us to this point. Richard Ovenden describes the deliberate destruction of knowledge held in libraries and archives from ancient Alexandria to contemporary Sarajevo, from smashed Assyrian tablets in Iraq to the destroyed immigration documents of the UK Windrush generation. He examines both the motivations for these acts—political, religious, and cultural—and the broader themes that shape this history. He also looks at attempts to prevent and mitigate attacks on knowledge, exploring the efforts of librarians and archivists to preserve information, often risking their own lives in the process. More than simply repositories for knowledge, libraries and archives inspire and inform citizens. In preserving notions of statehood recorded in such historical documents as the Declaration of Independence, libraries support the state itself. By preserving records of citizenship and records of the rights of citizens as enshrined in legal documents such as the Magna Carta and the decisions of the US Supreme Court, they support the rule of law. In Burning the Books, Ovenden takes a polemical stance on the social and political importance of the conservation and protection of knowledge, challenging governments in particular, but also society as a whole, to improve public policy and funding for these essential institutions.
Author: Erich Kästner
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780810111370
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Originally published in German in 1931 and in an expurgated English translation in 1932, this novel is the tale of Jacob Fabian, a Berlin advertising copywriter doomed in the context of economic, ethical, and political collapse by his characteristic mixture of detachment and decency. Fabian is a middle-of-the-road liberal, an Enlightenment rationalist, a believer that the public condition reflects prevailing private moralities, and a skeptic toward all ideological nostrums. Richly detailed and vividly plotted, Fabian remains an unparalleled personalization of the collapse of the Weimar Republic. This new edition restores the deleted sections considered too explicit for the original publication. It also includes Kastner's epilogue, which had been rejected by the original publisher, the preface added by the author to the 1952 German reissue, and an informative foreword by the scholar Rodney Livingstone.
Author: Joseph Roth
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393051674
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 236
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Book Description
"[Joseph Roth] is now recognized as one of the twentieth century's great writers." --Anthony Heilbut, Los Angeles Times Book Review
Author: Marc Wortman
Publisher: Public Affairs
ISBN: 1586484826
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 466
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Book Description
In this history of Atlanta's destruction, the author offers points of view of Confederate and Union soldiers and officers during a pivotal moment in the Civil War. By the author of The Millionaire's Unit: The Aristocratic Flyboys Who Fought the Great War and Invented American Air Power, in development as a feature film.
Author: Azar Nafisi
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1588360792
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 386
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Book Description
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • We all have dreams—things we fantasize about doing and generally never get around to. This is the story of Azar Nafisi’s dream and of the nightmare that made it come true. For two years before she left Iran in 1997, Nafisi gathered seven young women at her house every Thursday morning to read and discuss forbidden works of Western literature. They were all former students whom she had taught at university. Some came from conservative and religious families, others were progressive and secular; several had spent time in jail. They were shy and uncomfortable at first, unaccustomed to being asked to speak their minds, but soon they began to open up and to speak more freely, not only about the novels they were reading but also about themselves, their dreams and disappointments. Their stories intertwined with those they were reading—Pride and Prejudice, Washington Square, Daisy Miller and Lolita—their Lolita, as they imagined her in Tehran. Nafisi’s account flashes back to the early days of the revolution, when she first started teaching at the University of Tehran amid the swirl of protests and demonstrations. In those frenetic days, the students took control of the university, expelled faculty members and purged the curriculum. When a radical Islamist in Nafisi’s class questioned her decision to teach The Great Gatsby, which he saw as an immoral work that preached falsehoods of “the Great Satan,” she decided to let him put Gatsby on trial and stood as the sole witness for the defense. Azar Nafisi’s luminous tale offers a fascinating portrait of the Iran-Iraq war viewed from Tehran and gives us a rare glimpse, from the inside, of women’s lives in revolutionary Iran. It is a work of great passion and poetic beauty, written with a startlingly original voice. Praise for Reading Lolita in Tehran “Anyone who has ever belonged to a book group must read this book. Azar Nafisi takes us into the vivid lives of eight women who must meet in secret to explore the forbidden fiction of the West. It is at once a celebration of the power of the novel and a cry of outrage at the reality in which these women are trapped. The ayatollahs don’ t know it, but Nafisi is one of the heroes of the Islamic Republic.”—Geraldine Brooks, author of Nine Parts of Desire
Author: Len Deighton
Publisher: HarperCollins UK
ISBN: 0586045805
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 47
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Book Description
A ferociously cool Cold War thriller from the author of The Ipcress File. Len Deighton's third novel has become a classic, as compelling and suspenseful now as when it first exploded on to the bestseller lists. In Berlin, where neither side of the wall is safe, Colonel Stok of Red Army Security is prepared to sell an important Russian scientist to the West - for a price. British intelligence are willing to pay, providing their own top secret agent is in Berlin to act as go-between. But it soon becomes apparent that behind the facade of an elaborate mock funeral lies a game of deadly manoeuvres and ruthless tactics. A game in which the blood-stained legacy of Nazi Germany is enmeshed in the intricate moves of cold war espionage...
Author: Robert Sharenow
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062076922
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 331
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Book Description
Sydney Taylor Award-winning novel Berlin Boxing Club is loosely inspired by the true story of boxer Max Schmeling's experiences following Kristallnacht. Publishers Weekly called it "a masterful historical novel" in a starred review. Karl Stern has never thought of himself as a Jew; after all, he's never even been in a synagogue. But the bullies at his school in Nazi-era Berlin don't care that Karl's family doesn't practice religion. Demoralized by their attacks against a heritage he doesn't accept as his own, Karl longs to prove his worth. Then Max Schmeling, champion boxer and German hero, makes a deal with Karl's father to give Karl boxing lessons. A skilled cartoonist, Karl has never had an interest in boxing, but now it seems like the perfect chance to reinvent himself. But when Nazi violence against Jews escalates, Karl must take on a new role: family protector. And as Max's fame forces him to associate with Nazi elites, Karl begins to wonder where his hero's sympathies truly lie. Can Karl balance his boxing dreams with his obligation to keep his family out of harm's way? Includes an author's note and sources page detailing the factual inspirations behind the novel.
Author: James Mitchell
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781909619340
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 168
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Book Description
Written at the very end of his life when he was terminally ill, Bonfire Night was the last novel by James Mitchell to feature his most famous creation, David Callan. Out of print for more than a decade and never before published in paperback, Bonfire Night has been the rarest of the five Callan novels, eagerly sought after by dedicated fans of the iconic Callan television series (1967-72). As James Mitchell's son Peter explains in a poignant Introduction especially written for this new edition, Bonfire Night was never really meant to be published, but rather written as a form of therapy. The novel undoubtedly has major structural flaws but also many flashes of Mitchell's trademark cynical wit and his flair for fast-paced action, as he introduces the reader to a Callan who is now wealthy and living the high-life with his own 'castle' in Spain, a Lonely who is even wealthier and almost changed beyond recognition, and a new 'Hunter' - who is now a woman. Fortunately, Callan has not forgotten his old skills...
