4.29 AVERAGE

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.

[2,5]
dark sad tense fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

An epistolary novelette written in 1938 but set between 1932 and 1934, Address Unknown is comprised of fictional letters between two German business partners, one living in Munich and one in San Francisco. When it was originally published, it shocked its American audience with its portrayal of the Nazi poisoning of the German people, and over 80 years on, it remains an effective and compelling example of the historical fiction genre.
dark sad tense fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

This short gut punch of an epistolary novel from 1938 is about the rise of Nazism in Germany and how it swept ordinary people up in its zeal to make Germany great again, and about how it made people act in inhuman ways. Chilling, not to mention frighteningly timely and unfortunately relevant.

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

Fell asleep to this audiobook, liked what I heard tho
dark reflective sad fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: No
dark emotional informative fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: N/A
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated
medium-paced