Love in the Age of Hate. Chronicle of One Feeling, 1929-1939

In his masterful style, Florian Illies brings to life the 1930s, a decade of escalating political and cultural tensions. Jean-Paul Sartre eats cheesecake with Simone de Beauvoir at the Kranzler-Eck in Berlin, Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin experience wild nights in Paris and "Quiet Days in Clichy", F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway plunge into passionate affairs in New York, Bertolt Brecht and Helena Weigel flee into exile like Katia and Thomas Mann. In 1933, the "golden twenties" come to an abrupt end. It is at this time that the National Socialists seize power in Germany, burn books, and begin violence against Jews. Florian Illies takes us back to an era of exceptional political catastrophe to tell the story of the greatest lovers in cultural history. A thrilling and beautifully crafted journey into the past that reads as a commentary on our uncertain present.