Jeder Stirbt für Sich Allein (Alone in Berlin) // Hans Fallada
Alone in Berlin is a gripping tale of a middle-aged husband and wife who try to resist to Nazi rule from their apartment in Berlin. It is a book shrouded in darkness: the setting of crumbling Nazi Berlin, the theme of despair and failure, even the original German title, which translates as Everyone Dies Alone. The writing of the characters is superb, and there isn’t one page where I was bored or uninvested in the story and the characters I was reading about. In my opinion, this is the best book on this list, maybe one of the best books ever written. Pick it up, read it and become engrossed in a tale of passionate resistance by two perfectly ordinary people.
