{"product_id":"stay-alive-berlin-1939-ai1945-9781805462897","title":"Stay Alive: Berlin, 1939–1945","description":"\u003cp\u003eAn astonishing account of the human capacity for survival amid a great city's descent into utter annihilation.\u003c\/p\u003eIn 1939, when Ian Buruma's epic opens, Berlin has been under Nazi rule for six years, and its 4.3 million people have made their accommodations to the regime, more or less. When war broke out with Poland in September, what was most striking at first was how little changed. Unless you were Jewish. Then life, already hard, was soon to get unfathomably worse.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBy 1943, with the German defeat at Stalingrad, ordinary life in Berlin would acquire an increasingly desperate cast. The last three years of the war in Berlin are truly a descent into hell, with a deranged regime in desperate free fall, an increasingly relentless pounding from Allied bombers, and the mounting dread of the approaching Soviet army. The common greeting of Berliners was now not Auf wiedersehen or Heil Hitler but Bleiben Siebrig -'Stay alive'. And by war's end Berlin's population had fallen by almost half.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAmong the people trying to stay alive in the city was Ian Buruma's own father, a prisoner conscripted into forced labour in the war economy along with 400,000 other imported workers. Buruma gives due weight to his and their experiences, which give the book a special added dimension. This is a book full of tenderness and genuine heroism, but it is by no means sentimental: again and again we see that most people do not do the hard thing most of the time. Most people go along. It's a lesson that has not lost its timeliness.\u003ch4\u003eDetails\u003c\/h4\u003e\u003cp\u003eISBN13: 9781805462897\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eFormat: Hardback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eNumber of Pages: 400\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eEdition: Main\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003ePublication Date: 23 Jun 2026\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003ePublisher: Atlantic Books\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003ePublication City, Country: London, United Kingdom\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eDimensions (cm): 23.4(H)x15.6(L)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eWeight (gm): \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch4\u003eAuthor Biography\u003c\/h4\u003eIan Buruma was born in the Netherlands. He studied Chinese at Leiden University and cinema at Nihon University, Tokyo. He has lived and worked in Tokyo, Hong Kong, London, and New York. He is a regular contributor to \u003ci\u003eHarper's\u003c\/i\u003e and the \u003ci\u003eNew Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e and writes monthly columns for Project Syndicate. He is a professor at Bard College and lives in New York City.\u003ch4\u003eReviews\u003c\/h4\u003e\u003cb\u003eBuruma's personal connection shines through in the care with which he paints a vivid yet never overly sentimental portrait of the city at war... A captivating mosaic of wartime Berlin.\u003c\/b\u003e -- Katja Hoyer * Financial Times *\u003cbr\u003eIn wartime Berlin it was possible to find every form of human behaviour, from conformity and cruelty to bravery and indifference. Using his father's memories and letters as well as a wide range of other sources, Ian Buruma has composed a brilliant account of what it felt like to be there. \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eStay Alive\u003c\/i\u003e is a beautifully written account of a city under military and moral siege.\u003c\/b\u003e -- Professor Anne Applebaum * author of Autocracy Inc. *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eA rich and fascinating portrait of Berlin at war\u003c\/b\u003e * Literary Review *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBeautifully written and deeply researched\u003c\/b\u003e, \u003ci\u003eStay Alive\u003c\/i\u003e is particularly haunting in showing how ordinary Germans conformed with Nazism and the persecution and deportation of their Jewish neighbours. \u003cb\u003eIt makes a chilling warning of how people can acquiesce and look away from the worst realities.\u003c\/b\u003e -- Gary Bass * author of Judgment at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAn exceptional excursion into the multiple, contradictory lives, voices and dilemmas of Berlin's inhabitants during the Nazi war years\u003c\/b\u003e... By providing a compelling and compulsive immersion into that crucial period of history, \u003cb\u003eBuruma also eloquently reminds us of how, in our own time, the temptation to look away from persecution and injustice has terrifying consequences.\u003c\/b\u003e -- Ariel Dorfman * author of Death and the Maiden *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eIan Buruma brings to life Berlin during World War II so vividly that you can imagine yourself blithely strolling the streets of the city or hunkering down in the bomb shelters. \u003c\/b\u003eBuruma tapped a wealth of sources -- not only published memoirs, but first-hand interviews with elderly survivors and a cache of letters stored in a tin written by Buruma's own father, a forced labourer in Berlin during the war. The beauty of the book is Buruma's nuanced writing about the Germans who weighed resistance against the imperative to stay alive, and those who simply became cogs in Hitler's murderous regime. -- Barbara Demick, Samuel Johnson Prize-winning author of Nothing to Envy\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBuruma draws on an abundant source of material, including letters and diaries, enriching these with interviews with wartime eyewitnesses.\u003c\/b\u003e * Kirkus (starred review) *","brand":"Ian Buruma","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48880273293529,"sku":"9781805462897","price":55.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0502\/9530\/8441\/files\/9781805462897.jpg?v=1783000280","url":"https:\/\/www.arielbooks.com.au\/products\/stay-alive-berlin-1939-ai1945-9781805462897","provider":"Ariel","version":"1.0","type":"link"}