You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
4.3 AVERAGE
4.3 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
emotional
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
emotional
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
dark
emotional
medium-paced
Two friends, a German man who has returned to Germany and a Jewish man in San Francisco, write letters back and forth while fascism and Hitler are on the rise. It shows how quickly Hitler and Nazism destroyed with the hate.
Poignant, and a necessary read.
Poignant, and a necessary read.
I first saw this book performed onstage in Catalan, and knew i had to read it.
The book doesn't disappoint. Its a slim one but worth every word.
Like the stage show i know this will stay with me a long time.
The book doesn't disappoint. Its a slim one but worth every word.
Like the stage show i know this will stay with me a long time.
Unsettling, obviously… a little weird giving a book like this a rating
Not only do I love a book written in letters but this was a powerful short story about two friends on the opposite side of a war.
dark
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
A 1938 classic epistolary novel about the rise of Nazism in Europe. I read this very short novel on inauguration day 2025 and it was extremely timely. Highly recommended.
The Gist
Max Eisenstein, a Jew in New York, corresponds with his non-Jewish friend, Martin Schulse, in Germany in 1932-34. They have a joint business interest: a New York art gallery. Hitler is setting the stage to become Chancellor of Germany in 1933. Max and Martin exchange letters. Their correspondence is swiftly transformed from business matters and the chatter of friends, to awkwardly ingenuous, increasingly corrosive and bitterly destructive words that betray Martin’s embrace of the newly-politicized Aryan culture.
Review
“We are vain and we are dishonest because it is necessary to triumph over other vain and dishonest persons.”
This is a tiny work that delivers gut punches on every other page. Repeatedly, it seems to be overly dramatic and somewhat contrived, except that it’s all too believable and all too horrific. It’s hard to discuss Address Unknown without including spoiler information, but I’m going to try because I think you should want to take a short time out of your busy day to read this through at one sitting and let the experience overwhelm you.
The terrible consequence of the characters' estrangement is no surprise, but not less terrible because we can so easily grasp its nature and implications. The reader is left to wonder about the dreadful imperatives of human behavior that cannot avoid self-destruction.
A pen is the most powerful weapon indeed.
The ending took me by surprise and that's all I'll say about that--the story went somewhere I had no idea it was going to go and I had to sit back and wonder whether what I was feeling was valid or disgusting. How often does that happen? In the end, I concluded that I was more than satisfied.
If you are looking for a book that is short, shocking and that you will want to get everyone around you to read, here it is. Go get it.
Curious fact!
Kathrine Kressman Taylor wrote the story as a wake-up call to Americans about what was really going on in Nazi Germany. The editor of Story Magazine thought the piece “too strong to appear under the name of a woman,” so published it with the author name “Kressmann Taylor,” as though “Kressmann” were a first name. However, she ended up using it as her professional name for the rest of her life.
Max Eisenstein, a Jew in New York, corresponds with his non-Jewish friend, Martin Schulse, in Germany in 1932-34. They have a joint business interest: a New York art gallery. Hitler is setting the stage to become Chancellor of Germany in 1933. Max and Martin exchange letters. Their correspondence is swiftly transformed from business matters and the chatter of friends, to awkwardly ingenuous, increasingly corrosive and bitterly destructive words that betray Martin’s embrace of the newly-politicized Aryan culture.
Review
“We are vain and we are dishonest because it is necessary to triumph over other vain and dishonest persons.”
This is a tiny work that delivers gut punches on every other page. Repeatedly, it seems to be overly dramatic and somewhat contrived, except that it’s all too believable and all too horrific. It’s hard to discuss Address Unknown without including spoiler information, but I’m going to try because I think you should want to take a short time out of your busy day to read this through at one sitting and let the experience overwhelm you.
The terrible consequence of the characters' estrangement is no surprise, but not less terrible because we can so easily grasp its nature and implications. The reader is left to wonder about the dreadful imperatives of human behavior that cannot avoid self-destruction.
A pen is the most powerful weapon indeed.
The ending took me by surprise and that's all I'll say about that--the story went somewhere I had no idea it was going to go and I had to sit back and wonder whether what I was feeling was valid or disgusting. How often does that happen? In the end, I concluded that I was more than satisfied.
If you are looking for a book that is short, shocking and that you will want to get everyone around you to read, here it is. Go get it.
Curious fact!
Kathrine Kressman Taylor wrote the story as a wake-up call to Americans about what was really going on in Nazi Germany. The editor of Story Magazine thought the piece “too strong to appear under the name of a woman,” so published it with the author name “Kressmann Taylor,” as though “Kressmann” were a first name. However, she ended up using it as her professional name for the rest of her life.