Fallada's tragic life & his great novel of German resistance

Hans Fallada's "Every Man Dies Alone" was out of print for a long time, republished last year by the Melville Press, got quite a buzz (within the tiny circle of people who read this kind of book). It's about German resistance to the Nazis, and unusual in that it was written by a German very shortly after the war. Fallada had a tragic life, was institutionalized for various mental illnesses, died of a morphine OD in 1947. Book starts off well, and covers material very unfamiliar to American readers. We've seen a lot of books/movies about Jewish resistance and also about the a very few German resistance heroes, e.g., Schindler, but Every Man Dies Alone is more about ordinary Germans, most of whom slavishly supported the Fuhrer but a few of whom were good people - but it's much easier to go along quietly than to resist actively. This is their trauma, their struggle. The book seems to focus on one apartment building, and in particular one family, the Quangels, who've just lost their son in the war - the wife blames Hitler, the husband is not so sure, more timid. But they're being drawn toward an opposition. A Nazi fanatic family lives on the first floor, a Jewish widow on the 4th. Th Quangels feel sorry for the widow but will they step up for her? What will they do? What would most people do? Sadly, probably very little - just go a long, join the party if you have to do it to keep your job. The style of the book is extremely simple - written more like a best-seller of the era - Uris, Wouk, et al. - than like most literature on this topic.