A Woman in Berlin

London: Secker & Warburg, 1955. Hardcover. Very Good/Fair. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. 284 pages. Introduction by C. W. Ceram ; translated from German by James Stern. The back of the jacket suffers from loss at the head, is chipped , has a series of short tears and the split on the front flap has been repaired with clear tape. It's verso suffers from very minor damp staining and is also chipped. The back ofthe jacket also become attached to the back board, causing minor damage. The front board and the spine are in excellent condition. Apart from an ownrship signatutre, the body of the book is clean, unmarked and solid. "The anonymous author of this memoir was living in Berlin in April 1945 when Red Army soldiers marched into the city. What followed was an orgy of rape. In a series of unsentimental diary entries, the book's author - a German woman in her early thirties - describes the final days of the Third Reich, and the ordeal she suffered after Russian soldiers found her hiding place in a basement in east Berlin. One of Germany's leading literary editors, Jens Bisky, has identified the author as Marta Hillers - a German journalist who had studied at the Sorbonne, travelled extensively in Europe, and had written for German newspapers and magazines. According to Bisky, A Woman in Berlin was Marta Hillers's only major work. After the war, she circulated her diary among friends. One of them, German author Kurt Marek, recognised its value, and had it published in America. Hillers later married, moved to Switzerland, abandoned journalism, and disappeared. The chances are that the author was Marta Hillers, although that cannot be confirmed. Hillers died in June 2001, aged 90, and her executor refuses to comment.