The concept of this work is both unique and intriguing while the execution was boring and trite. I'm certain that persons more familiar with German literature and authors will take great offense at my brief analysis but I learned more about everyone else in Germany than I did about Marcel Reich-Raniki. The first half of the book did keep me interested but always wanting for more, more about him & his wife and a lot less about Max Frisch et al. I was also put-off by his constant references to himself and how important he was. He was lucky to survive the holocost, lucky to have such a position in Germany after the war, but should have left the writing to those whom he reviewed.

The most moving part of this book is its description of life in the Warsaw ghetto -- of how the Jews created a symphony orchestra and the Nazis' response to it, of the way that the Nazis chose which Jews were to be "resettled" and which would temporarily be allowed to live, and of Reich-Ranicki's and his wife's means of survival. I wish that Reich-Ranicki had been more introspective in the book, but one can't have everything -- it's a great book nonetheless.

Considering how little is translated and published here in the U.S. from the German, it is heartening that Marcel Reich-Ranicki's autobiography is among the chosen. It is a moving testimony of a life dislocated and reconstructed several times over, of a youth in Berlin, survival in the Warsaw Ghetto,life in post-War Poland, and a return to West Germany, where he rose to be the the most esteemed and, I suppose, also feared literary critic. His portrayal of the German literary scene from the sixties through the nineties by means of vignettes of its chief representatives is poignant and revealing. His assessment including that of his own role within it is likely to have provoked controversy.

Throughout the book emerges the self-portrait of a courageous,persevering, and also pained and sensitive man, who as a much-published author, radio and television personality seems to have been simultaneously at the center and at the margins of German cultural life for four decades.

I happened to be in the midst of reading the German version of the book when the events of September 11 threw our world out of kilter. Day after day I went back to Reich-Ranicki's "Mein Leben" with bated breath to escape from the present, not into an idyllic past, but to gain perspective on human suffering from a wise old man who describes his own lifelong anguish without sentimentality or moralizing. There may be other takes on his life story, but no one can deny his undying passion for the literature of the German language and his pursuit of it against all odds. To have an English translation to share with my friends is indeed something to write home about.

It is ironic, to say the least, that Reich-Ranicki, who was born in Poland, raised in Berlin, deported to Poland because of being a Jew, should be called "the Pope of German Letters." But then was he, whom the popes represent on Earth, not also a Jew? (with apologies to G.E.Lessing).