Wolf Among Wolves

Description

Wolf among Wolves is a sweeping saga of the collapse of a culture - its economy and government - and 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, Wolfgang Pagel, who loses everything in Berlin, then flees the chaotic city, where worthless money and shortages are causing pandemonium. Once in the countryside, however, Pagel finds a defeated German army that has decamped there to foment insurrection. Somehow, amidst it all, he finds romance. 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 an immensely absorbing work of literature.

Hans Fallada was the pen name of German author Rudolf Ditzen, whose books were international bestsellers on a par with those of his countrymen Thomas Mann and Hermann Hesse. He opted to stay in Germany when the Nazis came to power, and eventually had a nervous breakdown when he was under pressure to write anti-Semitic books. He was cast into a Nazi insane asylum, where he secretly wrote The Drinker, and he composed his anti-fascist novel Alone in Berlin just after the war, dying before its publication in 1947.