Paperback of the week
Saving Freud by Andrew Nagorski
Icon Books £10.99
This is the astonishing story of Sigmund Freud’s escape from Vienna after the Germans rolled into Austria in 1938 and began to round up Jewish people like him. Freud’s dithering in the face of danger is endearing. He loved his life in Vienna too much; he couldn’t believe his country had gone so irreversibly mad. It took a group of dedicated people to extract him. They bribed, fixed, cajoled and in the end bullied Freud on to a train to Paris, thence to London, where he spent the rest of his life, sucking on the cigars that were killing him. This book uncovers little new, but it tells its story with a propulsive urgency. Without a gang of elite helpers, Freud’s sisters were less fortunate. Three were murdered in Treblinka II and one died of starvation on her way there.
Sebastian Faulks
