Kathrine Kressmann Taylor's Novel "Address Unknown": A Story of Betrayal, Heartbreak and Unforgettable Consequences

burgundian: This book is more a long short story than a novel. But it is moving and extremely effective. I have recommended it to friends and they have all loved it

United States on Oct 04, 2023

Ashok Narayan: A must read book by a forgotten author and where credit was denied for several years as she was a woman. Her observations of how behaviour alters in the constant struggle between propaganda and reality between friends is insightful and brings home the point as well that few people stand up for the truth.

India on Sep 12, 2023

Alisa G. Fritsche: Bought it for my bookclub, and received it quick quick quick.

United States on Aug 09, 2023

Uta C. Groeschel: Written in 1938, before the world had even begun to understand the full extent of the incarnation of evil that the Nazis represented, Katherine Kressman Taylor found a way to open her contemporaries’ eyes. This epistolary novel is a timeless testimony to men’s ability to commit and tolerate evil when in the thralls of an ideology.

Germany on May 24, 2023

saleview: I thought this book was enlightening and informative which I found enjoyable I was move by how the the persecution of Jews came through the letters

United Kingdom on Apr 20, 2023

Aimee DarsAimee Dars: In this epistolary novel originally published in 1948, Max, a Jewish art dealer living in San Francisco, and Martin, Max’s former business partner, exchange correspondence for two years beginning with Martin’s return to Germany at the beginning of Hitler’s rise to power. At first the close friends warmly swap details: Max of what is happening with the business and with his younger sister’s stage success in Vienna, Martin with his family and establishing a new household as they discuss as they arrange for the transport of artwork between the U.S. and Germany. However, Martin’s tone changes as he joins the Nazi party, swept up in the cruel ideology and held captive by censors.

Although only sixty-six pages, this book, re-released by Ecco last year, is revelatory and powerful with implications for today’s fascist movements. It is amazing to me that the original was available well before the United States entered WWII and belies any arguments that the world didn’t know what Germany was doing to its Jewish population. Address Unknown deserves to be a much-read classic both for its subject matter and clever construction.

United States on Sep 05, 2022

Samantha Kalany: I feel so ignorant for knowing of the marvel that is and forever will be Address Unknown. This work of absolutely is so powerfully contained that I strongly encourage everyone I know to read and digest this book. It's a short read, but speaks more to how profoundly this literature struck a cord.

The horrors of Hilter's Germany and the world he tried to build took a hit on so many millions of people, for nothing other than the hate of others. Millions perished and bloodlines ceased to exist due to hate. "Hate has no home," as a lot of people prefer to pronounce, but that is so not true. Look at the United States today... the color of your skin shouldn't allow for such hatred and malnourished treatment, but it does and it saddens me.

In the States, at this point, lawmakers are pushing to add literature and lesson-plans to a "Banned" list, withholding important history from being told. The Holocaust happened. I wan't there, sure, but I have family members who've live through those terrors to spread the word -- a luxury, many don't have the convenience of possessing.

In the Afterword of this book, Charles Douglas Taylor, the son of Kathrine Kressman Taylor writes...

United States on Apr 05, 2022

Judy Gruen: This book can be read in less than an hour but it will stay with you for years. The drama unfolds chillingly between Max, a Jewish American, and Martin, his German business partner in an art gallery, after Martin returns with his family to Germany after having spent some years in the U.S.

It is 1933, Hitler has just taken over, and Martin first describes Hitler as "an electric shock, strong as only a great orator and a zealot can be. But I ask myself, is he quite sane?"

Quickly, though, Martin views Hitler as the savior of a battered and bruised people, and begins to distance himself from Max and their association. I don't want to say any more--the book is so brief giving anything else away would be a spoiler. Kressman Taylor illuminates the terrifying rapidity with which a powerful, evil leader can sweep up a people in hatred.

There is also an element of what goes around, comes around through the letters, which is stunningly clever.

United States on Mar 07, 2021

J. L. Sievert: When a friendship is deep it feels like it will last forever, an exalted sensation based on affinity, equality, generosity and respect. One can’t imagine it ending and never even thinks about it.

But this book wisely and subtly shows there’s a force stronger than friendship, and that force is ideology. Its power comes from a kind of primitive tribalism. If you’re with me, we are comrades; you are part of ‘us‘. But if you’re not, you’re part of ‘them’, the enemy. This brutal simplicity drains the world of shades of grey. All is black and white when ‘us’ and ‘them’ dominate.

Max and Martin were best friends. Affection, fraternity and brotherhood bound them together. Both were German aesthetes with an interest in modern art. They owned a series of art galleries in San Francisco where they sold minor works of famous painters, largely European. They had even sold a Picasso, though it could not have been from his later, mature period.

Culturally their tastes were similar, although their backgrounds were different. Max was a Jew, Martin a gentile. In America where they lived this difference meant next to nothing. There as exiles or ex-pats...

United Kingdom on Oct 06, 2019

Paul D: An absolutely superb book that, though short, highlights so deftly and succinctly the dangers of radical leaders, and the fragility of a people living in poverty and unrest. A country, such as Germany in the 1930's, stricken by poverty and sanctions from the international community following the First World War, is so susceptible and open to promises of a better life, that sometimes they will accept anything as long as it promises a change for the better. But of course no one is so ignorant, as to believe the rhetoric of someone like Hitler and his National Socialist Party for long. As soon as the stormtroopers begin to infringe upon the human rights of Jews and the qualities of liberation, it becomes obvious that Hitler's new order is not for the good of all, or in fact for the good of anyone or anything but the power of the Party itself.

As for the story, it is told in letters between two men, the Jewish Max Eisenstein, who lives in America, and Martin Schulse, a repatriated German now living in Munich with his wife, Elsa, and two young boys. To begin with there is a lighthearted joy between the two men as they remember the days when they were together in the US, and the...

United Kingdom on Jan 10, 2016