Descending and ascending
Nov. 24th, 2020 07:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
qatsiBook Review: Nightmare in Berlin, by Hans Fallada (translated by Allan Blunden)
Despite the similarity in the English title, this is not related to Alone in Berlin by the same author, except in so far as it is set in Berlin around (in this case immediately after) the Second World War. Dr Doll and his young wife live in a small town or village somewhere in north-eastern Germany; they modestly welcome the uncontested entry of the Red Army into their town hours after many of the more well-connected inhabitants have fled. (In many respects this subdued and well-behaved invasion seems the least realistic part of the book, but the description of events is so bland that one readily accepts the perspective of exhausted relief and jaundiced resignation of the anti-fascist Dolls.) In the coming weeks and months, Dr Doll is appointed as the local mayor, where he has to administer and sit in judgement on his compatriots, but he undergoes some sort of collapse or breakdown and the couple return to Berlin where his wife had an apartment.
When they arrive in Berlin, the city is not, of course, as they remember it, and both of them begin a perilous descent, battling bureaucracy, food and heating shortages, accommodation and medical problems. The story of how the Dolls find their way through these problems is the focus of the book. Somewhat autobiographical, the characters' descent is at the same time believable and unbelievable. Unlike the feckless criminal Franz Bieberkopf in Berlin Alexanderplatz, Dr Doll is an intellectual, an author who suffered hardships under the Third Reich but who lived uneventfully through the war. He is able to recognise his problems, but is unable to avoid them nonetheless. He is at times self-centred and self-absorbed, at other times aware of the plight and effort of others. The story manages to draw out the sometimes narrow line between comfort and privilege, and parlous and shadowy destitution. The conclusion, like the beginning, is muted, but with one or two twists that keep the attention right to the end.
Despite the similarity in the English title, this is not related to Alone in Berlin by the same author, except in so far as it is set in Berlin around (in this case immediately after) the Second World War. Dr Doll and his young wife live in a small town or village somewhere in north-eastern Germany; they modestly welcome the uncontested entry of the Red Army into their town hours after many of the more well-connected inhabitants have fled. (In many respects this subdued and well-behaved invasion seems the least realistic part of the book, but the description of events is so bland that one readily accepts the perspective of exhausted relief and jaundiced resignation of the anti-fascist Dolls.) In the coming weeks and months, Dr Doll is appointed as the local mayor, where he has to administer and sit in judgement on his compatriots, but he undergoes some sort of collapse or breakdown and the couple return to Berlin where his wife had an apartment.
When they arrive in Berlin, the city is not, of course, as they remember it, and both of them begin a perilous descent, battling bureaucracy, food and heating shortages, accommodation and medical problems. The story of how the Dolls find their way through these problems is the focus of the book. Somewhat autobiographical, the characters' descent is at the same time believable and unbelievable. Unlike the feckless criminal Franz Bieberkopf in Berlin Alexanderplatz, Dr Doll is an intellectual, an author who suffered hardships under the Third Reich but who lived uneventfully through the war. He is able to recognise his problems, but is unable to avoid them nonetheless. He is at times self-centred and self-absorbed, at other times aware of the plight and effort of others. The story manages to draw out the sometimes narrow line between comfort and privilege, and parlous and shadowy destitution. The conclusion, like the beginning, is muted, but with one or two twists that keep the attention right to the end.