The Book of Burned Books

On May 10, 1933, the Nazis launched a nationwide book burning in Berlin under the banner of "opposing the un-German spirit." Tens of thousands of books were thrown into the flames, and a first list of burned books, including 94 German-language writers and 37 non-German-language writers, was fixed in place. Weidermann traces each person on that list: he examines archives, collects old editions and letters, reads the works that led to the writers being burned, and writes a short critical biography for each—sometimes one or two pages, sometimes five or six. The book includes names still read today, such as Thomas Mann, Stefan Zweig, Brecht, and Remarque, as well as authors long sunk into the mists of history, for whom not even a single work can easily be found. Weidermann writes of how they wrote, how they were driven out, how they went into exile, how they drifted between cafés and hotels, and how some of them ended their lives in concentration camps or by suicide. What he truly sets out to do is turn the book burners' victory into defeat—to let the names rising from the ashes be read aloud once more. The book opens with "One Night in May," explaining the ins and outs of the book burning, then unfolds in chapters organized by theme and lines of fate, a warm literary-historical memorandum that can be read as a collection of stories.