Every Man Dies Alone

US: Melville House, 2009. Hardcover. Very Good/Very Good. A copy that has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged. "The greatest book ever written about German resistance to the Nazis."-Prim o Levi This never-before-translated masterpiece-by a heroic best-selling writer wh o saw his life crumble when he wouldn't join the Nazi Party-is based on a t rue story. It presents a richly detailed portrait of life in Berlin under the Nazis an d tells the sweeping saga of one working-class couple who decides to take a stand when their only son is killed at the front. With nothing but their g rief and each other against the awesome power of the Reich, they launch a s imple, clandestine resistance campaign that soon has an enraged Gestapo on their trail, and a world of terrified neighbors and cynical snitches ready to turn them in. In the end, it's more than an edge-of-your-seat thriller, more than a movin g romance, even more than literature of the highest order-it's a deeply sti rring story of two people standing up for what's right, and each other. Hans Fallada was one of Germany's best-selling authors-ranking with Thomas Mann and Hermann Hesse-prior to the rise of the Nazis. But while those writers fled Germany, Fallada stayed. Refusing to join the Nazi Party, he suffered numerous difficulties, including incarceration in an insane asylum. After the war, he wrote Every Man Dies Alone based on an actual Gestapo file. He died just before its publication in 1947.