Product Description

On 28 August 1984, Josef Fritzl drugged his teenage daughter with ether and imprisoned her in an underground bunker behind eight locked doors. Over the following twenty-four years, he raped and abused her, never letting her or the children she bore him out of the dark, windowless cellar. Based on 150 new interviews with psychologists, neighbours, colleagues and friends who knew Fritzl, as well as the insight of his own chilling confession, Allan Hall reconstructs the monstrous personality behind this hideous crime. He exposes Josef Fritzl's dark past in Nazi Austria, his previous conviction as a rapist, the appalling conditions in which Elisabeth and her children were kept and her astonishingly brave conduct while held prisoner. Including exclusive photographs and previously unseen evidence, this is a truly heart-stopping record of one of the most elaborate and disturbing cases of abuse in modern times.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8314 in Books
• Published on: 2008-11-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

From the Publisher
IMPORTANT NOTE: The Publisher has not authorized the distribution of this book to customers within Austria, Germany and Switzerland.

About the Author
Allan Hall was a New York correspondent for ten years, first for The Sun and later for the Daily Mirror. He co-founded the Big Apple News media agency and has covered German-speaking Europe for the last eight years for newspapers including several encyclopedias of crime. He lives and works in Berlin.

Customer Reviews

EXCELLENT BOOK
I finished this book on Sunday last and still feel stunned. I just cant believe how an 18 year old girl, little more than a child, endured 24 years, of rape and mental torture at the hands of her father, whilst giving birth to 7 children fathered by him, whilst entombed underground in a dungeon with no windows, scant air supply and little in the way of comfort.

He truly is a modern day monster, a convicted rapist who fooled, neighbours friends, social services and police for years.

This is a well written book, that tells a truly horrific story, without becoming gratuitious. It made me angry, sad and made me cry

Not for the faint hearted. But i thoroughly recommend it.

Incest monster Fritzl laid bare
Monster is a wonderfully crafted book that gives you all you want - an in-depth understanding of this horrific story, in a digestible and creative form from one of the great British journalists of our time.

I have flicked through the other books on Fritzl and Allan Hall - the Daily Mail's correspondent for Austria and Germany - wins hands down. He got exclusive interviews with the key people in the case.

His nuanced and skilled writing really brings this terrible story to life and helps you understand not just the practical detail but the human suffering that Elizabeth and her children have endured.

DOESN'T BEAR THINKING ABOUT
I really did not want to read this book - afraid of what I would read in all its shocking detail. I wont say "I enjoyed" reading the book as this would sound so inappropriate. What I will say is that it was an excellent written book and well researched by the author. Why oh why did nobody report these strange goings on. I suspect his wife was a very inadequate person not to have realised something was amiss.

Cannot believe that a human being could do this to anybody, let alone his own flesh and blood. The agonies this poor girl experienced are too shocking to try and imagine and I wonder if she will ever get over such an ordeal. Hopefully the prognosis for her children will be better.

Maybe this book should be read by any "stroppy" teenagers who moan that life is not fair or whatever, for them to appreciate just how good life really is for most of us.