Love in a Time of Hate: A Chronicle of Feeling, 1929–1939

In his masterful manner, Florian Illies brings the 1930s back to life—a decade of intense political and cultural tension. Jean-Paul Sartre eats a cheesecake with Simone de Beauvoir in the Berlin restaurant Kranzler-Eck; Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin experience wild nights in Paris and the “Quiet Days in Clichy”; F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway plunge into passionate love stories in New York; Bertolt Brecht and Helene Weigel flee into exile, like Katya and Thomas Mann.

In 1933, the “golden twenties” come to an abrupt end. National Socialists seize power in Germany, books are burned, and violence against Jews begins. Florian Illies takes us back to the era of exceptional political catastrophe to tell the story of the greatest lovers in the history of culture. A thrilling and beautifully planned journey into the past—read like a commentary on our uncertain present.