Product Description

Over the course of seventy minutes, the effects of an Allied raid on an unnamed German city in July 1944 are recounted in horrifying detail. As American planes discharge their bombs over the city, far below, in the midst of the inferno, an elderly couple trapped in their appartment try to live out their last moments with dignity. Elsewhere, a man searches desparately for his son, only to run into a troop of drunken soldiers. And as hundreds of civilians wait in an air-raid shelter, an American pilot drifts gently down on his parachute, unaware that he is about to join them...Payback was one of the first German novels to describe the Allies' bombardment of Germany during the Second World War. Based on Gert Ledig's experiences of German air raids in 1944, and first published in 1956, it paints a savage and unflinching picture of the realities of warfare for ordinary men and women.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #547298 in Books
• Published on: 2003-05-15
• Original language: German
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

About the Author
Gert Ledig (1921-1999) was born in Leipzig, and grew up in Vienna. At the age of 18 he volunteered for the army, and was wounded at the battle of Leningrad in 1942. He later reworked his experiences in his novel The Stalin Organ (1955). Sent back home, he trained as a ship building engineer, and was caught in several air raids - an experience that never left him, and which led to the writing of Payback (1956). Its reissue in 1999 in Germany led to the author's much publicised rediscovery there.