Book description
A powerful 1931 portrayal of a German town on the brink of chaos,
from bestselling author Hans Fallada (writer of Alone in Berlin)
It is summer, 1929, and in a small German town a storm is brewing.
The shabby reporter Tredup leads a precarious existence working for
the Pomeranian Chronicle - until he takes some photographs that offer
the chance to make a fortune. In Kr ger's bar, the farmers are
plotting their revenge on greedy officials. A mysterious travelling
salesman from Berlin , Henning, is stirring up trouble - but no one
knows why. Meanwhile the Nazis grow stronger and the Communists fight
them in the streets. And at the centre of it all, the Mayor, 'Fatty'
Gareis, seeks the easy life even as events spiral beyond his control.
As tensions erupt between workers and bosses, town and country, Left
and Right, alliances are broken, bribes are taken and plots are
hatched, until the tension spills over into violence.
'Uncommonly vivid and original' Robert Musil
'Real love and real humanity' Hermann Hesse
'The best account of small-town Germany ... so terribly genuine, it
is frightening' Kurt Tucholsky
'This novel's genius ... lies in Fallada's ability to reveal ... as
well as to analyse the macabre game of musical chairs that was the
Weimar Republic. Fallada gives us front-row seats to Germany's
decade-long quest for a sacrificial scapegoat that culminated in the
Nazi takeover ... Two years after Alone in Berlin's
runaway success, A Small Circus continues the Fallada revival
that owes so much to the efforts of its translator, the poet Michael
Hofmann' Andr Naffis-Sahely, Independent
'Fallada creates characters with Dickensian prodigality, each yokel,
hack, pig and pen-pusher brought to life in Michael Hofmann's
beautifully judged translation ... a generous, life-affirming treat'
Jake Kerridge, Telegraph
'Michael Hofmann ... comes as close as possible to giving us
Fallada's work in all its coarse, humorous, immediate, tragic glory'
Charlotte Moore, Spectator
'Not for the first time, all praise is due to Michael Hofmann's art
and feel for nuance. His translation catches the many voices - some
exasperated, others bewildered, a few downright angry - that make this
bold, exuberant and candid narrative sizzle with life and the
relentlessly shocking reality of it all' Irish Times
'Fallada's own experiences as a regional journalist in north
Germany underlie the action, and it is this sense of realism, combined
with an ear for dialogue and an acute understanding of human frailty,
that make the novel such an authentic portrayal of an imploding era'
Ben Hutchinson, Observer
Hans Fallada was one of the best-known German writers of the
twentieth century. Born on 21 July 1893 in Greifswald as Rudolf
Wilhelm Adolf Ditzen, he took his pen name from a Brothers Grimm fairy
tale. His most famous works include the novels Little Man, What
Now?, The Drinker and the bestselling Alone in
Berlin. Fallada died from an overdose of morphine on 5 February
1947 in Berlin.
Michael Hofmann is the author of several books of poems and a book
of criticism, Behind the Lines, and the translator of many
modern and contemporary authors. Penguin publish his translations of
Fallada's Alone in Berlin and Short Treatise on the Joys of
Morphinism, Kafka's Amerika and Metamorphosis and Other
Stories, Ernst J nger's Storm of Steel and Irmgard Keun's
Child of All Nations.
