Wolf Among Wolves

A sprawling saga of the collapse of a culture, its economy and government and the common man's struggle to survive it all. Set in Weimer Germany soon after their defeat in WWI, a young gambler looses it all in Berlin and flees the city for the countryside. However, he is greeted by a defeated German army that has camped there to foment insurrection. Somehow, amidst all the chaos, he finds romance. This fast-moving thriller is also a fascinating piece of history, written in lyrical prose that carries a powerful emotional punch.

About the Author :

Prior to World War II, the novels of German writer Hans Fallada (born Rudolf Ditzen) were international bestsellers. But when Jewish producers in Hollywood made his 1932 novel, Little Man, What Now? into a major motion picture, the rising Nazi Party took notice of him. After he refused to join the Party and was denounced by neighbors for alleged anti-Nazi sympathies, Fallada, unlike many other prominent artists, decided not to leave Germany. During WWII he suffered an alcohol-and-drug-fueled nervous breakdown and landed 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 heart attack—brought on by drug abuse just before it was published.

“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