Hailed as “Fallada’s best book” (The New Yorker), this sprawling post-WWI is a portrait of Berlin in a time of great upheaval—and of the common man’s struggle to survive it all Set in Weimar Germany soon after Germany’s catastrophic loss of World War I, the story follows a young gambler who loses everything in Berlin, then flees the chaotic city, where worthless money and shortages are causing pandemonium. Once in the countryside, however, he finds a defeated German army that has decamped there to foment insurrection. Somehow, amidst it all, he finds romance—it’s
The Year of Living Dangerously in a European setting.
Fast-moving as a thriller, fascinating as the best historical fiction, and with lyrical prose that packs a powerful emotional punch,
Wolf Among Wolves is the equal of Fallada’s acclaimed
Every Man Dies Alone as an immensely absorbing work of important literature.
“An unmissably brilliant portrait of Berlin before the Nazis.”
—The Times of London
This sweeping saga of love in dangerous times is deemed by many to be Hans Fallada's greatest work. Set amidst the 1923 collapse of the German economy, it is a vivid portrayal of the food and money shortages that led to rioting in the cities and unemployed soldiers marauding through the countryside-a depiction of unrest that made Fallada's publisher so fearful of Nazi retribution that upon the book's 1937 publication he told him, "If this book destroys us, then at least we'll be destroyed for something that's worth it."
It appears here in its first unabridged English translation, based on the 1938 translation by Philip Owens that has been revised and restored by Thorsten Carstensen and Nicholas Jacobs. Carstensen also provides an afterword discussing why the original version of the book was so heavily edited . . . and why Fallada's publisher thought a love story might get them killed.
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“His most ambitious novel . . . deeply moving . . . [Fallada] has evoked more than one can bear, but not more than it is necessary to learn, to keep and to understand.”
—Alfred Kazin, The New York Times (1938)
“The ideal summer read.”
—Katherine Powers, The Boston Globe
“An unmissably brilliant portrait of Berlin before the Nazis.”
—The Times of London
“Outstanding . . . his novels, whatever their ultimate position in the literary rankings, are simply much more entertaining than the tomes produced by the usual German suspects, Mann, Hesse, Grass, Böll . . . if you fancy a book to take you right through your holidays and any possible delays at the airport, you couldn’t do better than Wolf Among Wolves.”
—Tibor Fischer, Telegraph (UK)
“Out of the multitude of episodes and a large cast of characters, the picture of post-war Germany during the terror of the inflation period, comes into reality, as in almost no other book we have had . . . A human document—and a moving picture of a Germany gone mad.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Fallada handles [the characters] not morbidly but with a Hogarthian exuberance and a tough humor, infusing into even those dying spirits the life of his copious imagination . . . Fallada’s best book.”
—The New Yorker (1938)
“What other living German novelist shares with Fallada the power to grip the reader on the first page and hold him unremittingly through 1100 more?”
—Bayard Q. Morgan, World Literature Today (1938)
Praise for Hans Fallada:
“Fallada can be seen as a hero, a writer-hero who survived just long enough to strike back at his oppressors.”
—Alan Furst
“Fallada deserves high praise for having reported realistically, so truthfully, with such closeness to life.”
—Herman Hesse
