Life in Dark Ages: A Memoir

by Ernst Pawel

In Life in Dark Ages Ernst Pawel tells the intriguing story of his first 30 years.
At the time of the writing, Pawel was dying of lung cancer. He faced his illness with the same mix of candor, humor and anger as he faced fleeing the Nazis from Berlin to Belgrade, where he, a boy of 14, and his Jewish family were tolerated, but hardly welcome. He became part of the Yugoslav underground movement and eventually emigrated to America, where he joined the Army to fight the fascist plague. Disarming and on target, Pawel tells his story curmudgeonly, yet behind his wide open critical eye we come to recognize a deeply humane man whose intelligence was keen, whose love passionate, and whose integrity inspiring.

268 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Ernst Pawel was a German American biographer, novelist, and translator who worked primarily for New York Life Insurance from 1946 to 1982. Pawel wrote about the Holocaust and Sigmund Freud in three novels from 1951 to 1960. From 1954 to 1965 he translated books by Georges Simenon and Lotte Lehman. During the 1980s, Pavel released biographies of Franz Kafka and Theodor Herzl. Following his death in 1994, Pawel's biography of Heinrich Heine and his own memoir were released.

The Nightmare of Reason: A Life of Franz Kafka won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography and was nominated for the American Book Award for Nonfiction in 1984.

Reviews

[Fred · Rating 5 out of 5]

the 20th century alchemically condensed into a memoir drenched in wittiness and death

[Sheila · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ernst Pawel was a great writer of biographies. This was written in the last year of his battle with cancer and you tell, but it is still a great and inspiring book.