The Drinker

Description

This astonishing, autobiographical tour de force was written by Hans Fallada in a notebook while he was incarcerated in a Nazi insane asylum. Discovered after his death, it tells the tale - often fierce, often poignant, often even extremely funny - of a small businessman losing control as he fights valiantly to blot out an increasingly oppressive society. In a brilliant translation by Charlotte and A.L. Lloyd, it is presented here with an afterword by John Willett that details the life and career of the once internationally acclaimed Hans Fallada, and his fate under the Nazis - which brings out the horror of the events behind the book.

Hans Fallada was one of the best-known German writers of the twentieth century. Born in 1893 in Greifswald, north-east Germany, as Rudolph Wilhelm Adolf Ditzen, he took his pen-name from a Brothers Grimm fairytale. His most famous works include the novels, Little Man, What Now? and The Drinker. Fallada died in 1947 in Berlin.