A publishing sensation, the publication of Victor Klemperer's diaries brings to light one of the most extraordinary documents of the Nazi period.

The son of a rabbi, Klemperer was by 1933 a professor of languages at Dresden. Over the next decade he, like other German Jews, lost his job, his house and many of his friends.

Klemperer remained loyal to his country, determined not to emigrate, and convinced that each successive Nazi act against the Jews must be the last. Saved for much of the war from the Holocaust by his marriage to a gentile, he was able to escape in the aftermath of the Allied bombing of Dresden and survived the remaining months of the war in hiding. Throughout, Klemperer kept a diary. Shocking and moving by turns, it is a remarkable and important account.

'I can't remember when I read a more engrossing book' — Antonia Fraser

 

What was the last great book you read? 'Three or four years ago, I read the diaries of Victor Klemperer, which are unbelievably magnificent – maybe the best book I’ve ever read. It renewed my faith that writing was worthwhile; there really is literature, it’s not all crap!' — Nell Zink, The Guardian

Orion, 2021, 688pages.