Saving Freud: A Life in Vienna and an Escape to Freedom in London
Book Details
- Publisher : Icon Books
- Published : August 2023
- Cover : Paperback
- Pages : 336
- Category :
Memoir - Category 2 :
Psychoanalysis - Catalogue No : 97177
- ISBN 13 : 9781785788772
- ISBN 10 : 1785788779
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March 1938: German soldiers are massing on the Austrian border, on the cusp of fulfilling Hitler's dream of absorbing the country into the Third Reich. Many Jews make frantic plans to flee to safety. But one of the most famous men in the world, unable to contemplate leaving his beloved Vienna, is not among them. His name is Sigmund Freud.
Saving Freud is the story of a great man's life, and of the extraordinary people who managed to prolong it, by convincing him to escape to London: the Welsh physician who brought psychoanalysis to Britain; Napoleon's great-grandniece; an American ambassador; Freud's devoted daughter, Anna; and the doctor who risked his own life by staying at Freud's side.
In examining the histories of both Freud and his closest circle, Andrew Nagorski brilliantly evokes the story of Europe in the first half of the Twentieth Century. This is a tale of a great city, a collapsing empire, a rising terror -and of a man who would change the way we think.
Reviews and Endorsements
'The astonishing story of Sigmund Freud's last-minute escape from Vienna… In the American journalist Andrew Nagorski this tale has found its ideal narrator: clear, objective and keen to keep things moving'
Sebastian Faulks, Sunday Times
'[A] thrilling book, as edge-of-your-seat gripping as any heist movie, tells the story of how a "rescue squad" was marshalled to get Freud out of danger before it was too late'
Kathryn Hughes, Guardian Book of the Day
'Andrew Nagorski has written a gripping masterpiece about one of the greatest figures in history, whose insights about human beings as "savage beasts" could not be more timely'
Brett Kahr, Freud Museum London
'Unabashedly gripping and enjoyable, taking on the characteristics of a thriller as it builds to its denouement… Nagorski vividly evokes the atmosphere of [Vienna] in the 1930s, and especially the sudden and violent transition, after decades of resentful tolerance towards its Jewish citizens, to a mood of genocidal hostility. He also offers a tightly controlled, tension-filled account of the inexorable fall of Austria into the abyss of Nazi control'
Josh Cohen, Times Literary Supplement
'Nagorski tells a riveting new story, one that shows just how narrow Freud's escape from the Nazi genocide was… The narrative pace and Nagorski's fluid writing give this book the character of an adventure story. It is an engrossing but sobering read that reminds us how many others without the resources of the Freud family had no similar options to make an exodus'
Rachel Newcomb, Washington Post
About the Author(s)
Andrew Nagorski was born in Scotland to Polish parents, moved to the United States as an infant and has rarely stopped moving since, serving as Newsweek's bureau chief in Hong Kong, Moscow, Rome, Bonn, Warsaw, and Berlin. He is the author of seven previous critically acclaimed books, including Hitlerland and The Nazi Hunters. He now lives in St. Augustine, Florida, and continues to write for numerous publications.
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