Global bestseller was turned down 60 years ago by British publisher

A novel that became a worldwide publishing phenomenon more than 60 years after it was first published in Germany was turned down by a British publisher in 1948, according to a rejection letter found in Jerusalem.

British readers had to wait until 2009 for the first translation of Hans Fallada's Alone in Berlin, a masterpiece about extreme fear under a dictatorship. It came out in Germany in 1947, weeks after the author's death at 53, following a life blighted by mental illness and morphine. => http://bit.ly/ihj7V4