The Writers’ Castle

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What to expect

A fascinating new approach to the Nuremberg Trial, told through the stories of the many great writers who came to witness it
Nuremberg, 1945. As the trials of Nazi war criminals begin, some of the world's most famous writers and reporters gather in the ruined German city. Among them are Rebecca West, John Dos Passos, Martha Gellhorn, Erika Mann and Janet Flanner.
Crammed together in the press camp at Schloss Faber-Castell, where reporters sleep ten to a room, complain about the food and argue in the lively bar, they each try to find words for the unprecedented events they are witnessing. Here, tensions simmer between Soviet and Western journalists, unlikely affairs begin, stories are falsified and fabricated - and each reporter is forever changed by what they experience.
As Uwe Neumahr builds an engrossing group portrait of the literary luminaries at Nuremberg, we are taken to the heart of the political and cultural conflicts of the time - observing history at the very moment it was being written.

Critics Review

Using freshly unearthed archives, as well as the countless reports, features, cartoons, novels and radio dispatches filed by the writers, Neumahr makes the trial feel new again... Unsettling and elusive, a book about a trial that cleverly refuses to render judgment
Sunday Times
A riveting group portrait that puts these celebrity reporters in the spotlight... An engaging blend of gossipy anecdote and precise, thought-provoking analysis
Financial Times
Ranging across the (sometimes shifting) viewpoints of the different writers gathered in Nuremberg, Uwe Neumahr complicates the story in small but important ways... This readable history of the view from the castle shows the many ways in which human beings process transgression, violence and trauma
TLS
Fascinating... engrossing
Spectator
Neumahr's book centres on the authors of history's first draft... Perhaps most compelling is its exploration of the act of writing when words seem so profoundly inadequate
Observer

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