Berlin Finale

A wonderful rediscovery, like a perfectly preserved time capsule, but also a terrific novel by any standards - human, suspenseful, shot through with hard-earned wisdom

A wonderful rediscovery, like a perfectly preserved time capsule, but also a terrific novel by any standards - human, suspenseful, shot through with hard-earned wisdom

Captivating, moving, unputdownable. . . One of the best Berlin novels, sitting alongside Hans Fallada's Alone in Berlin

An unbelievable rediscovery, much like Hans Fallada's Alone in Berlin. . . Very few books recreate in such a way the nightmarish and intense hell that was the end of the Second World War

Magnificently vivid. . . Art has a habit of resurfacing, when it is worthwhile

An epic work of documentary fiction. . . Its driving narrative and emotional heft keep us rapt. . . compelling and moving

Heinz Rein lived through the final fighting when Hitler, from his bunker, decreed that any German officer ordering a retreat was to be killed on the spot by his own men. Berlin Finale is of interest now chiefly as valuable testimony from one who was there. . . It has the kind of doom-laden splendour of one of John Martin's apocalyptic visions

Spellbinding . . . vividly conveys the devastation wrought on Berlin by Allied bombing raids and the terrible, almost sub-human existence endured by its surviving citizens

Heinz Rein was an influential German novelist writing before and after the Second World War. He became a major figure in the 'rubble literature' period and his famous novel Berlin Finale, published in 1947, was one of the first bestsellers in the tumultuous German rebuilding period. He abandoned East Germany for the West in the 1950s.