Skip to content

The Drinker
Stock Photo: Cover May Be Different

The Drinker Paperback - 2009

by Fallada, Hans

  • Used

Description

Melville House Publishing. Used - Very Good. Former library book; may include library markings. Used book that is in excellent condition. May show signs of wear or have minor defects.
Used - Very Good
NZ$12.30
FREE Shipping to USA Standard delivery: 4 to 8 days
More Shipping Options
Ships from Better World Books (Indiana, United States)
The BIBLIO Guarantee | Ask Seller a Question

About Better World Books Indiana, United States

Biblio member since 2005
Seller rating: This seller has earned a 5 of 5 Stars rating from Biblio customers.

Better World Books is the world's leading socially conscious online bookseller and has sold over 100 million books. Each sale generates funds for global literacy and education initiatives. We offer low prices, fast shipping, and have a 100% money back guarantee, if you are not completely satisfied.

Terms of Sale:

Better World Books wants every single one of its customers to be happy with their purchase. If you are not satisfied your purchase or simply find out that it was not the book you were looking for, please e-mail us at: help@betterworldbooks.com. We will get back to you as soon as possible with directions on how to return the book to our warehouse. Please keep in mind that because we deal mostly in used books, any extra components, such as CDs or access codes, are usually not included. CDs: If the book does include a CD, it will be noted in the book's description ("With CD!"). Otherwise, there is no CD included, even if the term is used in the book's title. Access Codes: Unless the book is described as "New," please assume that the book does *not* have an access code.

Browse books from Better World Books

Details

  • Title The Drinker
  • Author Fallada, Hans
  • Binding Paperback
  • Edition 1st Edition Thus
  • Condition Used - Very Good
  • Pages 320
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Melville House Publishing, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.A.
  • Date 2009-03-03
  • Features Price on Product - Canadian, Table of Contents
  • Bookseller's Inventory # 5960104-6
  • ISBN 9781933633657 / 1933633654
  • Weight 0.73 lbs (0.33 kg)
  • Dimensions 9.02 x 6.02 x 0.87 in (22.91 x 15.29 x 2.21 cm)
  • Themes
    • Chronological Period: 1940's
    • Chronological Period: 20th Century
    • Cultural Region: Germany
  • Library of Congress subjects Autobiographical fiction, Alcoholics - Germany
  • Library of Congress Catalog Number 2009291569
  • Dewey Decimal Code FIC

From the publisher

Before WWII , German writer Hans Fallada’s novels were international bestsellers, on a par with those of his countrymen Thomas Mann and Herman Hesse. In America, Hollywood even turned his first big novel, Little Man, What Now? into a major motion picture.

Learning the movie was made by a Jewish producer, however, Hitler decreed Fallada’ s work could no longer be sold outside Germany, and the rising Nazis began to pay him closer attention. When he refused to join the Nazi party he was arrested by the Gestapo—who eventually released him, but thereafter regularly summoned him for “discussions” of his work.

However, unlike Mann, Hesse, and others, Fallada refused to flee to safety, even when his British publisher, George Putnam, sent a private boat to rescue him. The pressure took its toll on Fallada, and he resorted increasingly to drugs and alcohol for relief. After Goebbels ordered him to write an anti-Semitic novel, he snapped and found himself imprisoned in an asylum for the “criminally insane”—considered a death sentence under Nazi rule. To forestall the inevitable, he pretended to write the assignment for Goebbels, while actually composing three encrypted books—including his tour de force novel The Drinker—in such dense code that they were not deciphered until long after his death.

Fallada outlasted the Reich and was freed at war’s end. But he was a shattered man. To help him recover by putting him to work, Fallada’s publisher gave him the Gestapo file of a simple, working-class couple who had resisted the Nazis. Inspired, Fallada completed Every Man Dies Alone in just twenty-four days.

He died in February 1947, just weeks before the book’s publication.

Media reviews

“ This is an heroic book, brave, fearless and honest. It is necessary reading.”
—The Sunday Times (London)

“ Genuinely tragic and beautiful...[Fallada’s] perfectly horrifying, horrifyingly perfect novel is the story of himself rejected by society and returning the insult.”
—New Statesmen

"In a publishing hat trick, Melville House allows English-language readers to sample Fallada's vertiginous variety accompanying the release of Michael Hoffman's splendid translation of Every Man Dies Alone with the simultaneous publication of excellent English versions of Fallada's two best-known novels, Little Man, What Now? (translated by Susan Bennett) and The Drinker (translated by Charlotte and A.L. Lloyd). The Drinker, which Fallada wrote in 1944 while he was locked up in a criminal asylum for attacking his estranged wife, is a memoirish novel in which a country merchant describes his unrepentant, gloating slide into alcoholism and failure."
-- New York Times Book Review

About the author

Before WWII, German writer Hans Fallada's novels were international bestsellers, on a par with those of his countrymen Thomas Mann and Herman Hesse. In America, Hollywood even turned his first big novel, Little Man, What Now?, into a major motion picture.

Learning the movie was made by a Jewish producer, however, Hitler decreed Fallada's work could no longer be sold outside Germany, and the rising Nazis began to pay him closer attention. When he refused to join the Nazi party he was arrested by the Gestapo--who eventually released him, but thereafter regularly summoned him for "discussions" of his work.

However, unlike Mann, Hesse, and others, Fallada refused to flee to safety, even when his British publisher, George Putnam, sent a private boat to rescue him. The pressure took its toll on Fallada, and he resorted increasingly to drugs and alcohol for relief. After Goebbels ordered him to write an anti-Semitic novel, he snapped and found himself imprisoned in an asylum for the "criminally insane"--considered a death sentence under Nazi rule. To forestall the inevitable, he pretended to write the assignment for Goebbels, while actually composing three encrypted books--including his tour-de-force novel The Drinker--in such dense code that they were not deciphered until long after his death.

Fallada outlasted the Reich and was freed at war's end. But he was a shattered man. To help him recover by putting him to work, Fallada's publisher gave him the Gestapo file of a simple, working-class couple who had resisted the Nazis. Inspired, Fallada completed Every Man Dies Alone in just twenty-four days.

He died on February 5, 1947, just weeks before the book's publication.

Hang on… we’re fetching the requested page.