Wolf Among Wolves

New York: Melville House, 2010 9781933633923. Soft cover. First Restored American Edition. Stated first printing. Fine. Like New. No annotations or inscriptions etc. 816 pages. 1.5000 in x 8.1900 in x 5.4300 in. This sweeping saga of love in dangerous times – the 1923 collapse of the German economy, when food and money shortages led to rioting in the streets and unemployed soldiers marauding through the countryside —is deemed by many to be Hans Fallada's greatest work. Yet its 1938 publication made his publisher so fearful of Nazi retribution that he told Fallada, "If this book destroys us, then at least we'll be destroyed for something that's worth it." It appears here in its first unabridged translation into English, based on a contemporaneous translation by Philip Owens that has been revised and restored by Thorsten Carstensen and Nicholas Jacobs. Carstensen also provides an afterword discussing why the original version of the book was so heavily edited ... and why Fallada's publisher thought a love story might get them killed. Hailed as "Fallada's best book" (The New Yorker), this sprawling post-WWI is a portrait of Berlin in a time of great upheaval—and of 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 who loses everything in Berlin, then flees the chaotic city, where worthless money and shortages are causing pandemonium. Once in the countryside, however, he finds a defeated German army that has decamped there to foment insurrection. Somehow, amidst it all, he finds romance—it's The Year of Living Dangerously in a European setting. 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 the equal of Fallada's acclaimed 'Every Man Dies Alone' as an immensely absorbing work of important literature. "An unmissably brilliant portrait of Berlin before the Nazis." —The Times of London. First published in Germany in 1937. The second paragraph ends: "This is Berlin, Georgekirchstrasse, third courtyard, fourth floor, July 1923, at six o'clock in the morning. The dollar stands for the moment at 414,000 marks."