The Drinker (29 page)
Authors: Hans Fallada
JOHN WILLETT
ABOUT HANS FALLADA
HANS FALLADA was the pseudonym of Rudolph Ditzen, who was born in 1893 in Berlin, the son of a superior court judge. Prior to WWII, his novels were international bestsellers. But when Jewish producers in Hollywood made his 1932 novel,
Little Man, What Now?
into a major motion picture, the rising Nazis began to take note of him. His struggles increased after he refused to join the Party and was denounced by neighbors for “anti-Nazi” sympathies. Unlike many other prominent artists, however, Fallada decided not to flee Germany. By the end of World War II he’d suffered an alcohol-fueled nervous breakdown and was in a Nazi insane asylum, where he nonetheless managed to write—in code—the brilliant subversive novel,
The Drinker
. After the war, Fallada went on to write
Every Man Dies Alone
, based on an actual Gestapo file, but he died in 1947 of a morphine overdose, just before it was published.
Other books by Hans Fallada available from Melville House
Every Man Dies Alone
“Hans Fallada’s
Every Man Dies Alone
is one of the most extraordinary and compelling novels ever written about World War II. Ever. Fallada lived through the Nazi hell, so every word rings true—this is who they really were: the Gestapo monsters, the petty informers, the few who dared to resist. Please, do not miss this.”
—Alan Furst, author of Spies of Warsaw
“The greatest book ever written about German resistance to the Nazis.”
—Primo Levi
“An unrivalled and vivid portrait of life in wartime Berlin.”
—Philip Kerr, author of the Berlin Noir series
Little Man, What Now?
“Painfully true to life … I have read nothing so engaging as Little Man, What Now for a long time.”
—Thomas Mann
“There are chapters which pluck the nerves … there are chapters which raise the spirits like a fine day in the country. The truth and variety of the characterization is superb … it recognizes that the world is not to be altered with moral fables …”
—Graham Greene
“An inspired work of a great writer hitherto neglected in the English-speaking world. Fallada is a genius at bringing his wide range of colorful characters to life. The ‘Little Man’ is Mr. Everybody.”
—Beryl Bainbridge
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