Stig Dagerman wrote about the resigned, mechanical hopelessness of post-World War II  Germany back in 1947, but his book German Autumn still manages to resonate with readers more than 60 years later.

He writes, "Reality doesn't begin to exist until the historian has put it into its context and then it's too late to experience it, and vex over it, or weep. To be real, reality must be old."

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