Blood Brothers - Hardcover

"An enthralling and significant novel, authentic in its gritty documentary detail... This raw honesty, along with Michael Hofmann’s masterly translation... makes the book so contemporary and vital" (Rory MacLean Financial Times)

"An astonishing novel, every bit as astonishing in a different way as Fallada's Alone in Berlin, and deserves to have the same success" (Scotsman)

"The characters are engaging, and multidimensional. You care what happens to them" (Wall Street Journal)

"Like a karate chop: hard and direct, but true" (Der Spiegel)

"A real discovery" (Literarische Welt)

Blood Brothers is the only known novel by German social worker and journalist Ernst Haffner, of whom nearly all traces were lost during the course of the Second World War. Told in stark, unsparing detail, Haffner's story delves into the illicit underworld of Berlin on the eve of Hitler's rise to power, describing how these blood brothers move from one petty crime to the next, spending their nights in underground bars and makeshift hostels, struggling together to survive the harsh realities of gang life, and finding in one another the legitimacy denied them by society.