The Author of Himself : The Life of Marcel Reich-Ranicki

In its subtlety, intelligence and clear-headedness, Marcel Reich-Ranicki's account of the Warsaw Ghetto, the concentration camps, the relations between Poles and Jews, Poles and Poles, and the Germans, is one of the most compelling and dramatic ever recorded. After the war, Reich-Ranicki joined the Polish Communist Party, for which he performed secret intelligence work. He then spent two years in London at the Polish embassy, during which time he fell out with the Communist Party. He returned to Germany, where his rise was meteoric: first as a book reviewer and then on to national celebrity, as the Culture Czar on the influential FRANKFURTER ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG. As well as being an account of a remarkable life, this book is also a love letter to literature and the theatre, and an indispensable guide to twentieth-century German literature.

"This is an extraordinary autobiography written in a unique style that is very smooth, conversational, and frank. Reich-Ranicki is the most important literary critic on the German scene and has had a singular influence on German culture. His life reads like a novel."--Jack Zipes, University of Minnesota

"This is a remarkable book. Reich-Ranicki has produced a beautifully written and sharply observed testament to a lifelong love/hate relationship with the Germany that fascinated him as a youth, destroyed his family and his prewar world, and finally--ambivalently and deeply ironically--anointed him as its pope of literature."--Atina Grossmann, Cooper Union