“The socially conformist thing to do for a man of distinction—journalist, filmmaker, author of the best-selling first postwar German biography of Hitler, eventually co-editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung—would have been to recount the history of his own distinguished career. Instead Joachim Fest (1926-2006) chose to write
Not I, a colorful and dramatic account of his childhood and youth in the nonconformist family that made him what he became.” —
The Wall Street Journal"Quietly compelling, elegantly expressed…
Not I shrinks the Wagnerian scale of German history in the 1930s and 1940s to chamber music dimensions. It is intensely personal, cleareyed and absolutely riveting.”
—The New York Times “Joachim Fest’s fascinating memoir about what it was like to come of age during the years of the Third Reich is unusual because its central character is not the author but the author’s remarkable father.” —
The New York Times Book Review“Exceptional…it tells in a modest, believable, quietly bitter, and totally proud way of a family’s extraordinary decency…Strong and unique. Without it, the English language these days is short a very good book.” —
New York Times (Global Edition)
“I loved it, both as a story of great personal courage but also as a very moving witness to the fact that decent liberal values were not entirely lost during the Nazi period. It gives a fascinating and unusual slant on a time that has been so heavily worked over in more obvious ways. In its own manner, it stands alongside Victor Klemperer’s extraordinary diaries of the same period.” —Simon Mawer, best-selling author of
Trapeze and
The Glass Room “Fest’s accounts of being called up, of trying to avoid military service, fighting, seeing comrades die, and being caught and kept as a prisoner of war are engrossing.” —
Independent On Sunday “A heroic interrogation of Germany’s past.” —
Sunday Telegraph “[Fest] makes it hard to think about those blighted years, and it should be hard. His book is a glory, but only if you dare.” —
The Scotsman
"Fest’s portraits of his brothers, his mother, and his cousins—and of himself as a teenage soldier and POW—are equally vivid and full of pathos.
—Lorin Stein,
The Paris Review
"A stunning portrait of a strenuously anti-Nazi family in Berlin who managed to hang on to their moral convictions during the brutalizing Hitler years...A beautifully written and translated work that creates rare, subtle portraits of Germans. " —
Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)
"Joachim Fest’s last book is in many ways the most intimate of all of his revered journalistic writings and book-length nonfiction... [A] sobering look into the Nazi years, seen through the eyes of an embittered young German." –
Historical Novels Review
“[Not I] is filled with the memories of a childhood born of literature, survival, and uncertainty from a German child’s experience. You get a deeper understanding of how parents tried to maintain normalcy and a sense of being, while at the same time trying to figure out the art of survival and where their next meal would be coming from…[A] remarkable memoir.”
—City Book Review