**THE ACCLAIMED INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER'One of the most extraordinary and compelling novels written about World War II. Ever' Alan FurstInspired by a true story, Hans Fallada's Alone in Berlin is a gripping wartime thriller following one ordinary man's determination to defy the tyranny of Nazi rule**Berlin, 1940, and the city is filled with fear. At the house on 55 Jablonski Strasse, its various occupants try to live under Nazi rule in their different ways...

The Alcoholic by Hans Fallada is a powerful and deeply unsettling psychological novel that explores addiction, personal collapse, and the fragile boundary between respectability and self-destruction. Written with extraordinary honesty and emotional intensity, the novel is widely regarded as one of Fallada's most personal and haunting works. The story follows Erwin Sommer, a successful middle-class businessman whose outwardly stable life begins to unravel after tensions and disappointments ...

Hans Fallada's "Every Man Dies Alone" is a poignant exploration of individual resistance in the face of immense totalitarian oppression, set against the backdrop of Nazi Germany. Through a compelling narrative style that combines stark realism and psychological depth, Fallada chronicles the story of Otto and Elise Hampel, a couple who undertake a quiet yet courageous act of defiance by distributing anti-Nazi postcards. The novel's fragmented structure and nuanced character development refl...

"The Drinker" is one of the most powerful and psychologically penetrating novels by Hans Fallada. Written in the first person and drawing upon the author's own experiences with addiction, the novel offers a remarkably honest portrayal of how an ordinary, respectable individual can gradually lose control of his life through alcohol. The story centers on Erwin Sommer, a successful middle-class businessman who initially appears to have a stable and comfortable existence. At the beginning of t...

This never-before-translated masterpiece—by a heroic best-selling writer who saw his life crumble when he wouldn’t join the Nazi Party—is based on a true story.It presents a richly detailed portrait of life in Berlin under the Nazis and tells the sweeping saga of one working-class couple who decides to take a stand when their only son is killed at the front. With nothing but their grief and each other against the awesome power of the Reich, they launch a simple, clandestine resista...

A powerful story of the shattering effects of the First World War on both a family and a country - from Hans Fallada, bestselling author of Alone in Berlin'You only want to tyrannise, you're only happy when we're all trembling before you. You're just like your Kaiser. He who doesn't obey is shot down...'Gustav Hackendahl's will is law. Known as 'Iron Gustav', he runs his family and his Berlin carriage business with stern, unyielding discip...

'It was what we call in the trade a potato...'Tales of low-lifes and grifters trying to make ends meet in pre-War Germany.Penguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating the pioneering spirit of the iconic Penguin Modern Classics series, with each one offering a concentrated hit of its contemporary, international flavour. Here are authors ranging from Kathy Acker to James Baldwin, Truman Capote to Stanislaw Lem and George Orwell to Shirley Jackson; essays radical and i...

“I lived the same life as everyone else, the life of ordinary people, the masses.” Sitting in a prison cell in the autumn of 1944, the German author Hans Fallada sums up his life under the National Socialist dictatorship, the time of “inward emigration”. Under conditions of close confinement, in constant fear of discovery, he writes himself free from the nightmare of the Nazi years. He records his thoughts about spying and denunciation, about the threat to his livelihood and his literary w...

Available for the first time in English, here is an unforgettable portrayal by a master novelist of the physical and psychological devastation wrought in the homeland by Hitler’s war.Late April, 1945. The war is over, yet Dr Doll, a loner and ‘moderate pessimist’, lives in constant fear. By night, he is haunted by nightmarish images of the bombsite in which he is trapped — he, and the rest of Germany. More than anything, he wishes to vanquish the demon of collectiv...

For Willi Kufult, prison life means staying out of trouble, keeping his cell clean, snagging a precious piece of tobacco - and dreaming of the day of his release.Then he gets out.As Willi tries to make a new life for himself in Hamburg, finding a job and even love, he still cannot escape his past. Gradually he becomes sucked into a world of drink, desperation and deceit, and with one terrible act, he is ensnared in a noose of his own making...Hans Fallada's dark and...

Otto, an ordinary German living in a shabby apartment block, tries to stay out of trouble under Nazi rule. But when he discovers his only son has been killed fighting at the front he's shocked into an extraordinary act of resistance, and starts to drop anonymous postcards attacking Hitler across the city. If caught, he will be executed.Soon this silent campaign comes to the attention of ambitious Gestapo inspector Escherich, and a murderous game of cat-and-mouse begins. Whoever los...

"The greatest book ever written about the German resistance to the Nazis."—Primo LeviThis unflinching masterpiece based on a true story of resistance is more timely than ever, as fascist forces in the 20th century find their home in the rhetoric of the modern right wing political agenda.Entering its 15th year of English translation, the brilliant Hans Fallada's account of what The New Yorker called “a visceral, chilling portrait of...