April 1945, the last days of the Nazi regime. While bombs are falling on Berlin, the Gestapo still search for traitors, resistance fighters and deserters. People mistrust each other more than ever. In the midst of chaos, a disparate group – a disillusioned young soldier; a trade unionist and saboteur; a doctor helping refugees – continues to fight back. And in Oskar Klose’s pub, the resistance plan their next move, hunted at every step by the SS. Published in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, Berlin Finale is an unforgettable portrait of life in a city devastated by war.
Praise for 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
Lee Child
Captivating, moving, unputdownable. . . One of the best Berlin novels, sitting alongside Hans Fallada’s Alone in Berlin
Jens Bisky, Süddeutsche Zeitung
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
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
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.
New Statesman