In the Garden of Beasts

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In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself in a dark wood where the straight way was lost.

—DANTE ALIGHIERI,

The Divine Comedy: Canto I

(Carlyle-Wicksteed Translation, 1932)

Das Vorspiel

prelude; overture; prologue; preliminary match; foreplay; performance; practical (exam); audition; das ist erst das ~ that is just for starters

—Collins German Unabridged Dictionary

(seventh edition, 2007)

Once, at the dawn of a very dark time, an American father and daughter found themselves suddenly transported from their snug home in Chicago to the heart of Hitler’s Berlin. They remained there for four and a half years, but it is their first year that is the subject of the story to follow, for it coincided with Hitler’s ascent from chancellor to absolute tyrant, when everything hung in the balance and nothing was certain. That first year formed a kind of prologue in which all the themes of the greater epic of war and murder soon to come were laid down.

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