Hi!

I’m going to talk about a book I read and studied in middle school, but who really touched me.

Address Unknown is a novel written by Kathrine Kressmann Taylor and published in 1938. But the french edition was only released in 2002.
It is an epistolary novel who tells the story of Martin Schulze and Max Eisenstein. Both are friends and workmates : they handle an art gallery in San Francisco. One day, Martin decided to come back in Germany. But as he wanted to stay in touch with his friend and his gallery, they started a correspondence by mail. Through those letters, Max will tell Martin that he feels alone without him and Martin will answer that he feels the same, and he will describe what Germany became which he will qualify as a mess. During this time, Germany is assigned a new leader, and not least, Hitler. That’s when their relationship will be gradually deteriorate since Max is jewish unlike Martin. Martin will be more and more influenced by nazism and will not hesitate to tell Max. He will even end by considering him as a « subrace » when he will reach a new rank in Hitler’s army. Furthermore he will put an end to their correspondence and therefor to their friendship. In spite of those warnings, Max will send him a letter within he explains that he is worried because he has sent a letter to his sister, who is currently in germany, but the letter has returned with the mention « adress unknown ». Also he will ask him to make sure his sister, also jewish, is fine. Instead of reassuring him, Martin will tell him that his sister messed up by coming to his place while she was running away from the authority, so he denounced her. He added that she was probably dead at this time. As a consequence, Max will be very angry and will ask for revenge. Conscious of the censure, he will send a lot of letters to Martin, inventing him a jewish family and writting with some kind of codes to make the authority believe that he is not in Hitler’s side.

If you want to know what will happen in the end, do not hesitate to read the book!!!

I consider this book as one of my favorites. Despite a small number of pages, the story is touching and interesting. Moreover, the epistolary form changes from what we are used to read!