Novel by man who charted Hitler's rise is published after 90 years

A previously unknown novel by one of Europe's most influential postwar journalists has been published in Germany after his children found the handwritten manuscript in his desk.

- Kate Connolly

More than nine decades after he wrote it, Sebastian Haffner's Abschied, which captures the heady yet fragile spirit of the final days of the Weimar republic, has now soared to the top of the Spiegel bestseller list.

Born in Berlin as Raimund Pretzel, Haffner fled Nazi Germany for London with his Jewish fiancée in 1938. Two years later, his eyewitness account of his homeland's descent into fascism, Germany: Jekyll and Hyde, brought him instant acclaim. Winston Churchill is said to have told his cabinet to read the book in order to comprehend the Nazi threat.

In the UK, Haffner became a journalist for the Observer and changed his name to protect relatives still living in Germany. He was recognised as a commanding analyst of Nazism, and returned to Berlin for the Observer in 1954. He later became a columnist for the German news magazine Stern.

Haffner's son, Oliver Pretzel, said his family had deliberated for years over whether to release Abschied after Haffner's death aged 91 in 1999. They had been concerned, he said, that the work, a love story, might have seemed too slight, and overshadowed their father's towering reputation as a heavyweight commentator.