OUR STORE IS CLOSED ON ANZAC DAY: THURSDAY 25 APRIL
ABBEY'S BOOKSELLER PICK ----- Susanna Moder, 19, known as Sanna is helping her sister-in- law to plan a party for a man who doesn't reciprocate her feelings (and is not her husband). However the streets of Frankfurt are blocked because the Fuhrer is holding a rally and the city including Sanna are in a state of flux. Her lover Franz is stuck with her Aunt who she fears will denounce them, her brother can't publish his novels anymore and his wife is in love with Heini a disillusioned journalist-and then there is the ever manipulative Betty Raff who constantly needs to satiate her appetite for drama through vicarious means. Keun injects humour to highlight Sanna's constant bewilderment at what is happening to her friends but also the political chaos of the day. By using humour and satire Keun invites the reader to join in the sheer craziness of a country not only losing its mind but its soul. As Sanna says at one point about her relationship with Franz. "When there are two of you, you can laugh at a good many things which would make you cry on your own". An absolute gem of a read. Greg
Irmgard Keun was born in Berlin in 1905 and found instant success with her novels Gilgi (1931) and The Artificial Silk Girl (1932). Everything changed in 1933 when the Nazis blacklisted her and destroyed her books; in response, she attempted to sue the Gestapo for loss of earnings. She left Germany (and her husband) in 1936 and lived in exile in Europe, where she wrote Child of All Nations (1936) and After Midnight (1937). She sneaked back into Germany in 1940 under a false name and spent the rest of the war in Cologne. In later years, she wrote for magazines and radio and raised a daughter alone. She died in 1982.
ABBEY'S BOOKSELLER PICK ----- Susanna Moder, 19, known as Sanna is helping her sister-in- law to plan a party for a man who doesn't reciprocate her feelings (and is not her husband). However the streets of Frankfurt are blocked because the Fuhrer is holding a rally and the city including Sanna are in a state of flux. Her lover Franz is stuck with her Aunt who she fears will denounce them, her brother can't publish his novels anymore and his wife is in love with Heini a disillusioned journalist-and then there is the ever manipulative Betty Raff who constantly needs to satiate her appetite for drama through vicarious means. Keun injects humour to highlight Sanna's constant bewilderment at what is happening to her friends but also the political chaos of the day. By using humour and satire Keun invites the reader to join in the sheer craziness of a country not only losing its mind but its soul. As Sanna says at one point about her relationship with Franz. "When there are two of you, you can laugh at a good many things which would make you cry on your own". An absolute gem of a read. Greg
I cannot think of anything else that conjures up so powerfully the atmosphere of a nation turned insane * Sunday Telegraph * Acerbically observed by this youthful, clever, undeceived eye....Crystalline yet acid * Jewish Chronicle * Explosive ... Reading After Midnight today [still] feels dangerous. I kept turning to the copyright page, unable to believe that such a sexually and politically frank book could have been published in 1937 Germany ... After Midnight haunts far beyond its final page * NPR * Brief, important and haunting -- Penelope Lively
