The German novelist and short-story writer Hans Fallada (1893-1947) was an expert on how to survive imprisonment in the cause of writing. This diary was started in September 1944 as the Allies advanced on Berlin. Fallada had divorced his wife, Anna, but in a later drunken argument fired a pistol at her, missing by several feet. Fallada was committed to the Neustrelitz-Strelitz psychiatric prison. He had earlier spent periods in prison, and long and short periods in clinics and hospitals for treatment for morphine and alcohol addiction and depressive illness. No sooner had Fallada entered Neustrelitz and acquired supplies of pens, inks and paper than the copious diary entries of this slightly bumptious apologia are launched. Fallada has escaped at one bound from wartime Berlin into literat