The Dancing Bear

You dont want to mind about any of this said the driver waving a hand at the grey ruins and the greyer dust. In a few days youll be so used to it that youll like them. Berlins a grand place! Id rather be here than anywhere else in the world and thats a fact.No more perceptive portrait of Germany in defeat has been etched in word than Frances Faviells first book The Dancing Bear which made so powerful an impact upon me that I read it in a single sitting. Guy Ramsey Daily TelegraphBerlin during the decisive years from 1946 to 1949. ... The prostitution which paid so handsomely; the black market which brought in rich rewards although it meant that the Berliners had to part with treasured possessions; the night clubs which catered for still baser tastes; the impoverished intellectuals and the starving professors and the poor who had only their wits with which to eke out a bare sustenance--all this and much else the author describes with insight incisiveness and realism. Times Literary SupplementThere is great charity in this book; there is the sharp limpid eye of the artist; there is sound realism; and there is an unswerving passionate desire to tell the truth. John Connell Evening NewsThey were hard and terrible times and brilliantly does Frances Faviell describe them for us. We meet the Altmann family and follow their joys and troubles. ... The book is a brilliant pen-picture of the post-war years. We have British French American and Russian characters but the background is always Berlin and the strange tunes to which its bear danced. Liverpool Daily PostThis new edition includes an afterword by Frances Faviells son John Parker and additional supplementary material.