Hans Fallada’s penultimate book, Nightmare in Berlin, is more of an autobiography of his last two years than a novel.
Like his protagonist Doll, Fallada was appointed mayor of a small country town by the Russians in the wake of Germany’s defeat in World War II; he married a woman much younger than him; the two became morphine addicts, checking in and out of Berlin sanatoriums (drug rehab clinics); he tried to become a successful writer again. It’s practically nonfiction!
And I think if Fallada had framed it as that then I’d view it more favourably. As it is, the “novel” feels clumsily structured and the entire first third, set in the rural town under Russian occupation, was completely irrelevant. The book could’ve started right as Doll and Alma returned to Berlin and it would have still worked. The ending too is very weak and trails off with a feeble, unconvincingly upbeat parting message.
The almost dreamlike vagueness of aspects of the narrative added to the rushed flavour of the book. The transition from rural Germany to Berlin is sudden and awkward, happening without explanation, and it’s quite shocking to find out that Fallada’s benign description of Alma’s “bilious complaints” was a euphemism for her drug addiction! About halfway through the book the needles come out, they start shooting up and I was like whaaaat, they’ve been smack addicts all along?!
Fallada writes some really vivid characters in this book but conversely when Doll and Alma’s children are mentioned they’re complete nonentities – so why mention them at all? They didn’t add anything to the story. The Russian soldiers in the first part are similarly written as blanks - though maybe that’s how they actually were?
A character in a sanatorium asks Doll why he’s so depressed and he says that he can’t go into it and leaves it at that, despite doing so would’ve been so insightful. Yes, there’s the overall misery of living in wartime Berlin but it feels like there’s something more he’s alluding to and not talking about it only keeps the reader from more deeply engaging with the character’s plight.
Still, Fallada’s novel has great worth for capturing the atmosphere and imagery of the time and I got a strong idea of what it must’ve been like in the immediate aftermath of the war. The ruined city, its inhabitants becoming predatory through deprivation, preying on one another, morality going out the window, the thriving black market, and an all-pervading sense of apathy and hopelessness - the latter at least from Doll/Fallada’s perspective. Because the German people did pick themselves up remarkably quickly after the war - right now they’re the economic powerhouse of Europe!
And it is morbidly interesting to read about Doll and Alma’s struggles with drugs (in their “bed coffins”), assuming, like me, you’re someone who enjoys reading drug books like William Burroughs’ Junky and Norman Ohler’s Blitzed (a thoroughly compelling nonfiction book I highly recommend if you want to know more about drugs and the Third Reich).
Fallada is mostly on fine form writing and, except for the sudden transitions between locations and times between the first and second and then second and third parts, his talent for words is still there even right at the end.
Though he closes out the book on an optimistic note about Germany’s future, it was a future Fallada would never see due to his failing health; nor would he live to see the publication of this book. The years of substance abuse finally caught up with him, his heart gave out soon after completing Alone in Berlin and he died in February 1947.
Nightmare in Berlin isn’t among Fallada’s best works - I’d recommend Alone in Berlin, if you’ve not read that and are interested in reading this author’s finest novel - but it’s not a bad book either. It’s also a fine accompaniment to his short story, A Short Treatise on the Joys of Morphinism, or perhaps that story might be better to read if you’re not looking to make a big time commitment on this writer.
I feel like if he’d lived longer and maybe gone back to rewrite some of it, or simply done away with the fiction conceit and presented it as the autobiography it clearly was, it’d be a better book; but I still enjoyed parts of it - Nightmare in Berlin is dark but certainly no nightmare to read.
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