Sincerely, this book is the best I have
read this year. Henceforth it will be part of my list of all time best reads.
Despite the atrocities it describes, I found it very easy to read, given the
detached tone of the narrator. Indeed, the text does not fall into melodrama, it
remains objective. That said, I had tears in my eyes on many occasions.
The anonymous author makes a poignant,
cold, detailed and humorous autobiographical account of the post-war period
following the fall of Berlin, when the Red Army invaded Germany. It relates the
everyday life in Berlin during the Soviet occupation, particularly in relation
to women, victims of multiple rapes, starvation, loneliness and the relentless
struggle for survival.
This memoir was published anonymously for
the first time in 1954 in English. The narrator wrote her diary every day by
the light of a candle. Later she gave her notebooks to a friend, who decided to
have them published anonymously to preserve the privacy of the people described
in her memoir. After the death of the narrator, in 2001, the name of the author
was revealed. She was Marta Hillers, a German journalist.