That's enough Germany - Ed

For a blog about bass playing, Manchester City and the idiots vegetarians have to deal with on a daily basis, I've talked an awful lot about Germany.
Well, there's a lot to say: a lot's happened involving Germany and it's an important place. But maybe we need to switch subjects for a while and come back to 'the German agony' and "Name your child Waldi" in the coming weeks.
Before I suspend German operations though, can I recommend without hesitation a book I read by chance and one which at first I wasn't going to start.

'Alone in Berlin' by Hans Fallada is a masterpiece. It's tense, vivid and engrossing: it deals with the alienation of characters surviving in one way or another in the Berlin of the early war years - the victory in France. But everything changes when the soldier son of one of the characters dies in France and he starts to  leave postcards around the city questioning the Fuhrer's leadership. It's uncomfortable, awful and written by a man who would have known.  It's a book that needs to be read.