A Stranger in My Own Country The 1944 Prison Diary [Hardcover]

“I lived the same life as everyone else, the life of ordinary people, the masses.” Sitting in a prison cell in the autumn of 1944, the German author Hans Fallada sums up his life under the National Socialist dictatorship, the time of “inward emigration”. Under conditions of close confinement, in constant fear of discovery, he writes himself free from the nightmare of the Nazi years. He records his thoughts about spying and denunciation, about the threat to his livelihood and his literary work and about the fate of many friends and contemporaries. The confessional mode did not come naturally to Fallada, but in the mental and emotional distress of 1944, self-reflection became a survival strategy.

Fallada’s frank and sometimes provocative memoirs were thought for many years to have been lost. They are published here for the first time.

Introduction vi

The 1944 Prison Diary 1

A despatch from the house of the dead. Afterword 219

The genesis of the Prison Diary manuscript 233

Chronology 236

Notes 239

Index 268

This is certainly a revelatory book. As its author intended, it reveals much about the pernicious nature of Nazi rule during the Third Reich; the compromises demanded, the tribulations endured, the lives ruined. At one point Fallada laments: “Oh, how they bled us dry! How they robbed us of every joy and happiness, every smile, every friendship! Yet it also reveals something that its author did not intend, and that is Fallada’s own deeply flawed character.
The Financial Times

An outspoken memoir of life under the Nazis written from a prison cell... a fascinal³.