The Novelist From Berlin
Reviewed By Janet Mawdesley November 19, 2023
Author V S Alexander

Distributor: Amazon
ISBN: 978-1496734815
Publisher: Kensington
Release Date: September 2023
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Told through the eyes of Berlin Woman Marie “Nikki” Rittenhaus, The Novelist of Berlin is a window into a past that was brutal, terrifying and destructive. Now as an older woman living in obscurity, enjoying what she considers relative peace for the first time in her adult life, she reflects on her life.
Commencing in Berlin in the 1920’s during the period between the First and Second World Wars, based on the story of Irmgard Keun, a female novelist who was forced to flee Germany, leaving behind her husband and daughter The Novelist from Berlin revisits the days when, to be a woman in Germany and have ideas was very dangerous.
Marie Rittenhaus is like many women in Berlin as the German economy is failing. Young, intelligent and resourceful, she finds work wherever she can, going to the local Bars at night looking for a meal and the company of men. Her friend Lottie often goes with her.
She meets Rickhard Langer, a handsome, intelligent man; a movie producer for Belin’s Passport Pictures. A courtship of sorts takes place with Nikki moving in with Rickard, eventually agreeing to marry him and giving birth to their beautiful daughter.
As the Nazi Party led by Adolf Hitler is beginning to influence her husband’s work and life, Nikki begins to write. Her first novel The Berlin Woman based on what she considers is or should be the new Berlin woman, is published to great acclaim but sees her come under the watchful eye of the Nazi Party, who eventually ban her book.
Times are getting harder, the Nazi Party is now a powerful force which seems unstoppable. The conflict of what she believes is right and her husband’s increasing affiliation with Nazi’s forces her to make a decision as to how she wants to lead her life.
Eventually she has to flee to Holland where she meets Emil, another activist against the Nazi’s, becomes a member of the Dutch Underground and falls deeply, irrevocably in love.
The Novelist from Belin is an engrossing read as it details a history not often written about; the dark, destructive days of the rise of Nazism, the dread that became an accepted way of life for so many: the fear, hatred and horror of what seemed to be an unstoppable force, growing around the woman in particular, the Jews or anyone who dared to have a differing opinion.
V. S. Alexander paints a very real picture of the years of the rise and fall of Hitler and his Nazi Party, followed by the uncertain times after Germany’s defeat when the Soviet Union began rebuilding to become a force to be feared; another version of the Nazi Party philosophy. The grim days of the Belin Wall being built and the brave people who refused to accept what was happening are well described.
Ranging over forty years that changed the world and Europe, with influences still felt today, this well researched historic novel is powerful, captivating and perhaps a reminder that when charismatic, powerful men rise up to want world dominance, the World needs remember the lessons of history and take note.