Love in a Time of Hate

A spectacular new account of the 1930s through the eyes of the greatest lovers of the time

While Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir eat cheesecake at the Kranzler Eck café in Berlin, Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin enjoy wild nights in Paris, and F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway throw themselves headlong into passionate affairs in New York. Bertolt Brecht and Helene Weigel flee into exile, and so do Thomas and Katia Mann. All of this happens as the Nazis are seizing power in Germany, burning books and ramping up their persecution of the Jews.

In 1933 the Roaring Twenties come to a screeching halt. Florian Illies takes us back to an age of unprecedented political disaster and portrays some of the greatest lovers in recent history. In Berlin, Paris and Ticino and on the French Riviera, the great heroes of the age do all they can to ward off the impending collapse of culture itself. Love in a Time of Hate is an enthralling journey into the past that reads like a commentary on our own uncertain times.

“Please read this book. It is utterly captivating. I learned so many things about love, art and horror.” Ferdinand von Schirach

"Illies' special trick [...] is, with the focus on love, sex and passion in the supposedly highly personal, to capture the political aspects of an era." Peter von Becker - Der Tagesspiegel 

"Illies achieves the feat of creating a maelstrom and becoming addictive himself." Jörg Magenau - RBB Kulturradio