The superb, bestselling diaries of Victor Klemperer, a Jew in Dresden who survived the war - hailed as one of the 20th century's most important chronicles.

June 1945. The immediate postwar period produces many shocks and revelations - some people have behaved better than Klemperer had believed, others much worse. His sharp observations are now turned on the East German Communist Party, which he himself joins, and he notes many similarities between Nazi and Communist behaviour. Politics, he comes to believe, is above all the choice of the "lesser evil". He serves in the GDR's People's Chamber and represents East German scholarship abroad. But it is the details of everyday life, and the honesty and directness, that make these bestselling diaries so fascinating.

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, 656pages.