Aftermath: Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich by Harald Jahner

***SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION******SHORTLISTED FOR THE BRITISH ACADEMY BOOK PRIZE******SHORTLISTED FOR THE CUNDILL HISTORY PRIZE***A Book of the YearThe Times * Sunday Times * Telegraph * New Statesman * Financial Times * Irish Independent * Daily Mail’A masterpiece’ SPECTATOR’Exemplary [and] important… This is the kind of book few writers possess the clarity of vision to write’ MAX HASTINGS, SUNDAY TIMES’Magnificent… There are great lessons in the nature of humanity to be learnt here’ TELEGRAPHGermany, 1945: a country in ruins. Cities have been reduced to rubble and more than half of the population are where they do not belong or do not want to be. How can a functioning society ever emerge from this chaos?In bombed-out Berlin, Ruth Andreas-Friedrich, journalist and member of the Nazi resistance, warms herself by a makeshift stove and records in her diary how a frenzy of expectation and industriousness grips the city