Baum was Austrian and Jewish. In 1929 she had great success with the book Grand Hotel and left Germany for Hollywood. Her parents remained in Germany and died there during WWII.

Hotel Berlin has been taken over by the National Socialists, a "half-official branch of the Government," occupied by Hitler's elite, including army generals, foreign industrialists and high-ranking members of the SS. There is no shortage of food and wine, although the rest of the country is starving.

Baum tells the stories of the residents of the Hotel Berlin: the general who has taken leave from the front; the actress who is a favourite of Hitler; the British writer who makes propaganda broadcasts; an SS man; a diplomat and, most importantly, the student, Richter, who has escaped the Gestapo on the way to his execution and is hiding in the Hotel Berlin.

Baum described herself as a "first-rate second-rate writer." The writing in Hotel Berlin is heavy-handed, the characters have little depth and are driven by the requirements of the plot, but none of this matters. Baum is writing in 1943 about the Germany of 1943 and she knows what she's talking about. She predicts the attempted assassination of Hitler; she describes the motivations of the professional soldiers, the ruthless quelling of dissent, and living conditions in Germany. How can she have known?

Well worth a look. ( )

Lesser known but undeservedly forgotten work by the author of Grand Hotel, the film of which iconically starred Greta Garbo as the ballerina who wanted to be alone.

Baum, an exile, sets this novel in a bomb-torn Berlin which is losing the war although many characters are still trying to deny this fact. The large cast includes an awkwardly situated English writer, who has been pressured to give broadcasts for the government, an ambitious and initially ignorant young actress, a weathered prostitute with a tragic history, and a middle-aged Jewish woman desperate to ease her husband's suffering. (And also features the scarred and embittered doctor from the earlier novel.) While Baum's omniscient style of narration might initially be jarring to those used to contemporary trends, Baum writes with a powerful sense of vision and Hotel Berlin is more perceptive and thought-provoking than many current 'good reads'. An author due for rediscovery?

Although unfortunately out of print at the moment, it is still possible to obtain second-hand copies of Hotel Berlin. Mine was printed in 1946, on paper that conformed to the rationing laws -- contributing to a physical sense of reading a link to the times Baum was writing about. ( )