Rating: 
Summary: Fascinating and Disturbing
Review: I read this book in less than 20 minutes, but I was struck with its implications for hours afterwards. The novella touches on an important theme in the post-Sept. 11 world: that of revenge. Is it ever justified to take the law into your own hands, to punish someone who did you wrong, to make him lose his life? What good can this possibly do? While the revenge is certainly sweet, is it justified? Is it moral? Interesting topic for an essay.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating and Disturbing
Review: I read this book in less than 20 minutes, but I was struck with its implications for hours afterwards. The novella touches on an important theme in the post-Sept. 11 world: that of revenge. Is it ever justified to take the law into your own hands, to punish someone who did you wrong, to make him lose his life? What good can this possibly do? While the revenge is certainly sweet, is it justified? Is it moral? Interesting topic for an essay.
Rating: 
Summary: the horrors of the Hitler reign in a few letters
Review: I was so impressed with this book. It's only a few pages, letters between two partners, one a Jew in America and one who becomes a Nazi in Germany. The "addressee unknown" stamp says it all, just like "night and fog"; the disappearance of people into a void. It evokes a chilling horror, but what was even better was the revenge story, in which the Jewish man proved just how wrong his partner was about the "Semitic race." This book can be read in an hour or less, but you'll think about it a lot longer. Brilliant.
Rating:
Summary: the horrors of the Hitler reign in a few letters
Review: I was so impressed with this book. It's only a few pages, letters between two partners, one a Jew in America and one who becomes a Nazi in Germany. The "addressee unknown" stamp says it all, just like "night and fog"; the disappearance of people into a void. It evokes a chilling horror, but what was even better was the revenge story, in which the Jewish man proved just how wrong his partner was about the "Semitic race." This book can be read in an hour or less, but you'll think about it a lot longer. Brilliant.
Rating:
Summary: WHAT? YOU HAVEN'T READ THIS YET?
Review: Look, who cares how historically accurate this story is, because it is first and foremost that--a story. The letters in the story, however, are based on REAL letters. Basically, it tells the tale of a Jew and a German. The German goes to Germany during the war and the two friends start writing back and forth. I won't spoil the end for you, but the plot twist is wonderful. Considering that this was written in the late 1930's, it reads really well. When this story was published in STORY magazine, that issue sold like fountain drinks in the desert. This is one of the few stories ever written that brings home the nuclear power of words.
Rating: 
Summary: Somewhat disappointing after all the hype
Review: This book is something of a publishing sensation in France, where I read it. Perhaps I expected too much, but I am a little disappointed. This is a short story imagined by an American woman writer living in California in 1938. One can certainly excuse her for not being completely accurate about Germany, writing in San Francisco in the Thirties: for the period, she makes her point beautifully and tersely. But now, 60 years later, I am amazed that so many people take this book as literal truth. Nazism was no nicer than what is shown here, but I don't think it expressed itself exactly in the way it is written here. (To get a much more accurate feel, I recommend the haunting "Reunion" by Fred Uhlman, or "Wartime Lies" by Louis Begley, two Jewish writers who were there.) Almost at every page, I was jarred by small inaccuracies: using images of Berlin in writing to a man settling in Bavaria, for instance; the theatrical way in which Max's sister escapes to Martin's newly-bought Schloss, which as straight out of Boy's Own adventures; the unselfconscious, didactic way in which Martin's letters show him won over to Nazism (read by contrast Albert Speer's "Inside the Third Reich" to understand how a brilliant intellectual can be seduced by Hitler). Martin's letter explaining how he abandoned Max's sister stretches credulity -- no-one remotely intelligent would have confessed to such behaviour, even to a former friend he was trying to persuade to stop writing. Max's revenge is nicely plotted: it's a clever idea, and intellectually I can see how it would work, for instance in a stage play; but I don't really believe it would have worked out that way (it could be argued convincingly that it was a Jewish plot.) My problem is that at no time do I really believe in the characters. (Max is not a convincing art dealer; the passages in his and Martin's letters about the sales he makes don't sound true; Martin refers to Max's judaism with admiration in his first letter, so that his later about-turn is unbelievable: a man that cultured ought to be a lot more ideological when he recants; Martin has lived abroad; he can't have the reactions of an unsophisticated German burgher.) As a period short story, this is a nice if slight, work. But it would be a mistake to see it as historic evidence of how Jews and Germans fared in the Thirties. It's well-meaning but inaccurate.
Rating:
Summary: Somewhat disappointing after all the hype
Review: This book is something of a publishing sensation in France, where I read it. Perhaps I expected too much, but I am a little disappointed. This is a short story imagined by an American woman writer living in California in 1938. One can certainly excuse her for not being completely accurate about Germany, writing in San Francisco in the Thirties: for the period, she makes her point beautifully and tersely. But now, 60 years later, I am amazed that so many people take this book as literal truth. Nazism was no nicer than what is shown here, but I don't think it expressed itself exactly in the way it is written here. (To get a much more accurate feel, I recommend the haunting "Reunion" by Fred Uhlman, or "Wartime Lies" by Louis Begley, two Jewish writers who were there.) Almost at every page, I was jarred by small inaccuracies: using images of Berlin in writing to a man settling in Bavaria, for instance; the theatrical way in which Max's sister escapes to Martin's newly-bought Schloss, which as straight out of Boy's Own adventures; the unselfconscious, didactic way in which Martin's letters show him won over to Nazism (read by contrast Albert Speer's "Inside the Third Reich" to understand how a brilliant intellectual can be seduced by Hitler). Martin's letter explaining how he abandoned Max's sister stretches credulity -- no-one remotely intelligent would have confessed to such behaviour, even to a former friend he was trying to persuade to stop writing. Max's revenge is nicely plotted: it's a clever idea, and intellectually I can see how it would work, for instance in a stage play; but I don't really believe it would have worked out that way (it could be argued convincingly that it was a Jewish plot.) My problem is that at no time do I really believe in the characters. (Max is not a convincing art dealer; the passages in his and Martin's letters about the sales he makes don't sound true; Martin refers to Max's judaism with admiration in his first letter, so that his later about-turn is unbelievable: a man that cultured ought to be a lot more ideological when he recants; Martin has lived abroad; he can't have the reactions of an unsophisticated German burgher.) As a period short story, this is a nice if slight, work. But it would be a mistake to see it as historic evidence of how Jews and Germans fared in the Thirties. It's well-meaning but inaccurate.
Rating:
Summary: disturbing
Review: This is a strong story. A simple correspondence between best friends slowly makes us the witness of one of those episodes in human life that we hope never to experience: the loss of faith in human nature. And the devastation that this brings to our own selves...very simple, very powerful.
Rating:
Summary: A simple, powerful and disturbing account of Nazi Germany
Review: What did it mean to be Jewish in the late 1930's in Nazi Germany? How powerful was Hitler's fascist brainwashing of the German race? How quickly did he influence the German people ? In an instant this book answers these questions and a great deal more regarding the Jews and Nazi Germany. It is a concise and compelling compilation of letters between a Jew in the States and a German returned from the States to live in Germany. Martin, the German, after voicing initial hesitation, succumbs to the temptation of following Hitler and rejecting his Jewish friend and business partner in the process. What is particularly disturbing is that it is clear from the outset that he is an intelligent, open-minded and well-educated individual. If even he is totally taken in by Hitler and his regime, what chance did those of a lesser education and a lesser quality of life have in the face of Hitler and his positive promises for the future ? They would have been swept along by his current of hope in an instant, even if that hope involved the elimination of minorities in the process. Only much later could the majority of Germans step back and realise the true implications of the Hitler regime. 'Address Unknown' captures this and much more in an exchange of but a few letters. The simplicitiy of the work emphasises the horrors of Hitler.
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