3.5
The Fire and the Darkness
ByPublisher Description
On February 13, 1945, British bombers began their merciless attack on the German city of Dresden. The first contingent killed people and destroyed buildings, roads, and other structures. The second rained down fire, turning the streets into a blast furnace, the shelters into ovens, and whipping up a molten hurricane in which scores of noncombatants were burned, baked, or suffocated to death. Early the next day, American bombers finished off what was left.
Beginning with life in the city days before the attack, Sinclair McKay's
offers a pulse-pounding account of these events from the perspective of ordinary civilians: Margot Hille, an apprentice brewery worker; Gisela Reichelt, a ten-year-old schoolgirl; boys conscripted into the Hitler Youth; choristers of the Kreuzkirche choir; artists, shop assistants, and classical musicians, as well as the Nazi officials stationed there.
What happened that night in Dresden was calculated annihilation in a war that was almost over. McKay's work takes a complex, human view of this terrible night and its excruciating aftermath.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesAbout Sinclair McKay
SINCLAIR MCKAY is the bestselling author of
(published in the UK as The Secret Life of Bletchley Park) and
, as well as several other books. Sinclair is a literary critic for the Telegraph and The Spectator and for three years was a judge of the Encore Prize, awarded annually for best second novel. He lives in the shadow of Canary Wharf in east London.
Other books by Sinclair McKay
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