Ferdinand, the Man with the Kind Heart

Description

Newly translated by Michael Hofmann, this is the funny and touching final novel from the author of Child of All Nations Bombed-out Cologne after the war is a strange place to be. The black market in jam and corsets is booming, half-destroyed houses offer opportunities for stealing doors and eggcups, and de-Nazification parties are all the rage. Recently released from a prisoner-of-war camp, Ferdinand drifts around the city, strenuously avoiding his fiancee and drinking brandy with his fabulous cousin. But is this any way to go on? Told with Keun's characteristic humour, irony and generosity of spirit, this is a wry portrait of a man, a city and a nation that asks how we go on living even in the face of total defeat.

Irmgard Keun was born in Berlin in 1905 and found instant success with her novels Gilgi (1931) and The Artificial Silk Girl (1932). Everything changed in 1933 when the Nazis blacklisted her and destroyed her books; in response, she attempted to sue the Gestapo for loss of earnings. She left Germany (and her husband) in 1936 and lived in exile in Europe, where she wrote Child of All Nations (1936) and After Midnight (1937). She sneaked back into Germany in 1940 under a false name and spent the rest of the war in Cologne. In later years, she wrote for magazines and radio and raised a daughter alone. She died in 1982. Michael Hofmann is a poet and translator from German. For Penguin he has translated four books by Hans Fallada, in addition to works by Franz Kafka, Ernst J nger, Irmgard Keun and Jakob Wassermann.

The overwhelming power of Keun's work lies in her surprisingly raw, witty, and resonant feminine voices * Bookslut * Nothing short of a revelation ... I am still haunted by it 'Praise for Child of All Nations' * Evening Standard * I cannot think of anything else that conjures up so powerfully the atmosphere of a nation turned insane 'Praise for After Midnight' * Sunday Telegraph *