Iron Gustav

Every so often you come across a book so finely wrought that you have no doubt about its status as a literary classic. Iron Gustav is one … The writing is visual, vivid and visceral, the irony delicate, and even when it is cynical the novel doesn’t sneer … Fallada’s descriptions of material degradation and squalor equal those of Dickens and Dostoyevsky. He has the gift for complex narrative of Thomas Mann combined with the page-turning powers of great thriller writers such as Raymond Chandler, and the structural control of a great painter or composer … This [Penguin Modern Classics edition] is the first authentic version of not just a classic, but a masterpiece of world literature – Paul Levy * Wall Street Journal *A powerful portrayal of the devastating effects of the first world war on a family and a country … The project went through a tortuous journey, with rewrites ordered by Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda chief, which have been taken out of the new edition … this new edition is as close as possible to Fallada’s original * Observer *Fallada captures the small tragedies of family life, the loss of dignity caused by unemployment, squalid housing and the misery of seeing civilized values destroyed. This anti-war book, censored by Goebbels in the Thirties, is a gripping addition to modern German history * Daily Mail *There is a serious cause for celebration: one of the finest German-language works of the 20th century is now available as it was intended to be read … A vivid, atmospheric portrait of Berlin … Fallada’s literary genius rests not only in how he can sustain a multithreaded narrative but in how he, apparently effortlessly, develops characters through chronicling their actions … the book triumphs as a study of ordinary Berliners faced with dire adversity; Fallada celebrates them repeatedly, their wariness, their humour, their toughness, their blunt kindness and, above all, their conversation … This remarkable work, now complete after 76 years, could well be one of the finest novels any of us will ever read. Hans Fallada really was that most rare creature, a born novelist who was also a witness * Irish Times *The ‘hundreds of deep rifts’ that tear defeated Germany apart play out in microcosm within [Iron Gustav’s] family … Fallada shuffles melodrama, farce and documentary realism … This, as even Dr Goebbels must have seen, is laughter in the dark – Boyd Tonkin * Independent *A powerful novel … this new version is something of a publishing coup as it is the first time we have the novel in its entirety in English … Iron Gustav acutely highlights the chequered fortunes of the ordinary ‘little man’ against the larger picture of Germany’s moral and economic breakdown … [this is] a saga with the same reach and depth as Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks … a chronicle of Berlin in those turbulent early decades of the 20th century. Key events appear like milestones: war, Versailles, lawless street-fighting, hyperinflation, Weimar hedonism and the first dark shoots of Nazism … This is a social history writ large and mercifully free of sanctimonious preaching or soft-focus distortions … Fallada’s voice is as beguilingly lucid as ever, his images clear to the point of stark, his blighted and resilient Berliners ringing astoundingly true * National *

Hans Fallada was one of the best-known German writers of the twentieth century. Born in 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? and The Drinker. Fallada died from an overdose of morphine on 5 February 1947 in Berlin.