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cemoses's review against another edition
1.0
I was very disappointed in this book. I enjoyed very much Fallada's book Everyone Dies Alone.
This book I found very hard to follow-it may be the translation. I had a hard time figuring who said what. There may have been a lot of German slang used in the book which was hard to translate.
There was not much suspense because you know things are going to go well for the main characters.
This book I found very hard to follow-it may be the translation. I had a hard time figuring who said what. There may have been a lot of German slang used in the book which was hard to translate.
There was not much suspense because you know things are going to go well for the main characters.
holono's review against another edition
dark
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
3.75
nathaneal's review against another edition
dark
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
4.5
chalicotherex's review against another edition
3.0
Emil Bruhn; eleven years a slave, friendly, hard-working, with such few and trifling claims on life: the pictures, a girl and a modest job. And what had been the end of it all? An ex-convict was always an ex-convict. The most humane punishment would be to hang them all on the spot.
I understand the urge to abridge Hans Fallada, given that he has a tendency to overwrite, but it occasionally felt like something important was missing in this translation by Eric Sutton.
Still, every stage of Willi Kufalt's life -- his final days in prison before release, his life at a crooked halfway house, his establishment of a typing agency with his fellow excons and it's subsequent collapse, life in boarding houses, the crooked world of smalltown newspapers, his engagement to a glazier's daughter, and the thrilling collapse back into crime that includes a jewellery heist and prurient purse-snatching -- all feel like believable, realized worlds.
The book is grim. Maybe the grimmest I've seen from Fallada, aside from [b: Alone in Berlin|6801335|Alone in Berlin|Hans Fallada|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1403509628s/6801335.jpg|1481990]. There there's no question over whether Willi will end up back in jail, it's only a matter of time.
In an interesting historical note, Fallada's biographer Jenny Williams wrote that by the time the manuscript for the book was finished in 1933, Fallada understood he had to tread carefully so as not to upset Germany's new aryan overlords. But he was too naive to self-censor his depiction of a single mother, a homosexual relationship and a prison system badly in need of reform. So instead he wrote a half-assed introduction assuring readers that these problems had only existed in the old Germany and that the Nazis had already fixed all of this. His writing got him condemned and eventually denounced by the Nazis, while Thomas Mann sneered at him from his Swiss opera box for having made even the smallest compromise.
(Also, apparently the part in chapter ten where Willi is shown kicked out of school early by a pastor for having dared to meet with a girl who he'll never get to see again comes directly from Fallada's own life, explaining why it barely fits into the rest of the book.)
I understand the urge to abridge Hans Fallada, given that he has a tendency to overwrite, but it occasionally felt like something important was missing in this translation by Eric Sutton.
Still, every stage of Willi Kufalt's life -- his final days in prison before release, his life at a crooked halfway house, his establishment of a typing agency with his fellow excons and it's subsequent collapse, life in boarding houses, the crooked world of smalltown newspapers, his engagement to a glazier's daughter, and the thrilling collapse back into crime that includes a jewellery heist and prurient purse-snatching -- all feel like believable, realized worlds.
The book is grim. Maybe the grimmest I've seen from Fallada, aside from [b: Alone in Berlin|6801335|Alone in Berlin|Hans Fallada|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1403509628s/6801335.jpg|1481990]. There there's no question over whether Willi will end up back in jail, it's only a matter of time.
In an interesting historical note, Fallada's biographer Jenny Williams wrote that by the time the manuscript for the book was finished in 1933, Fallada understood he had to tread carefully so as not to upset Germany's new aryan overlords. But he was too naive to self-censor his depiction of a single mother, a homosexual relationship and a prison system badly in need of reform. So instead he wrote a half-assed introduction assuring readers that these problems had only existed in the old Germany and that the Nazis had already fixed all of this. His writing got him condemned and eventually denounced by the Nazis, while Thomas Mann sneered at him from his Swiss opera box for having made even the smallest compromise.
(Also, apparently the part in chapter ten where Willi is shown kicked out of school early by a pastor for having dared to meet with a girl who he'll never get to see again comes directly from Fallada's own life, explaining why it barely fits into the rest of the book.)
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