Die Festung (1995) By Lothar-Günther Buchheim
The great German novel about the absurd reality of the war. Spring 1944. The enemy voyages of the German submarines have long since become suicide missions, and Hitler's Reich is on the verge of collapse. U 96 got away again. It was the last patrol for the commander: he became the flotilla commander in Brest. The war reporter Buchheim is ordered off board to Berlin. This journey becomes the beginning of a crazy odyssey through a war-torn world. Into bomb-ridden Germany, where destruction and death have become part of everyday life, the Nazi machine even more perfect, the deceptions more perfidious. In Berlin, Buchheim found out about the arrest of his publisher Peter Suhrkamp, and he soon came under pressure too: Does his French girlfriend Simone work for the Resistance? Berlin, Munich, Paris, the invasion front and the Brest fortress are the stations where they work Buchheim experienced the war in cross section. Eventually he comes across an overloaded submarine that is supposed to break out of Brest.
For more than twenty years, Lothar-Günther Buchheim worked on the “fortress” after his world success “Das Boot”. The result is the great German novel about the Second World War, which was always challenged but never written. Buchheim describes the reality of 1944 - four months of a time in which "more often happened in one day than usual in a year.
In German text
- Hard Cover with Dust Jacket
- 1464 pages
- In Good Condition
