In turn, Ahasverus was cursed to roam the earth until the Second Coming. Stefan Heym's novel re-creates and expands this myth to propose that the right synthesis of love and rebellion can bring humankind to the Kingdom of Heaven.Heym introduces both Ahasverus and Lucifer as angels cast out of heaven for their opinions on God's order. Their respective oppositions continue throughout the rest of time: Ahasverus remains defiant through protest rooted in love and a faith in progress, while Lucifer is rebellious by means of his old, familiar methods. In a funny eternity of run-ins, debates, and meddling with characters such as Christ, a disciple of Luther, and a Marxist professor in East Germany, Ahasverus and Lucifer struggle on, awaiting the Second Coming.

    She and her family, including an illiterate, abusive, alcoholic but resourceful father, rescued and sheltered scores of them. In a childlike style that reflects the excitement of those dramatic, danger-filled days, she relives the emotions of the irrepressible and plucky young heroine as she and her mother nursed the wounded and comforted the dying, both American and German, while her father salvaged precious stores from the water. Duboscq, severely injured and disfigured in a land-mine explosion that killed her brother, credits surviving five years of surgical procedures, and the tribulations of later life, in part to the inspiration she derived from the suffering and bravery of the soldiers she met during this childhood experience, an act of courage for which she was awarded France's Legion of Honor.

    Botting concentrates on the defining events that took place in the period between the collapse of the Third Reich and the foundation of the new Germanys to create the prevailing atmosphere of a most unusual and little-charted time in history. This was a period when four of the strongest industrial nations to emerge from World War Two attempted to work together to govern the once strong Germany, now prostate, impoverished and devastated by war and defeat. Telling the story of the dynamics between occupiers and occupied, the crimes perpetrated by both and the Imperial tendencies of the occupiers, Botting shows that the plan to bring democracy to Germany was far from flawless or straightforward. Timely republication of a classic book on a fascinating but often overlooked period in the history of the Second World War. Published to Coincide with the 60th Anniversary of the end of World War II. 'Graphic and moving...the Germans paid a frightful price for their sins of conquest' Desmond Albrow, Sunday Telegraph