A tie-in edition of Fallada's best-selling WW2 novel, to accompany the major new film starring Emma Thompson and Brendan Gleeson.
Berlin, 1940, and the city is filled with fear. When unassuming couple Otto and Anna Quangel receive the news that their beloved son has been killed fighting in France, they are shocked out of their quiet existence and begin a silent campaign of defiance. A deadly game of cat and mouse develops between the Quangels and the ambitious Gestapo inspector Escherich in Fallada's desperately tense and heartbreaking exploration of resistance in impossible circumstances.
Hans Fallada was born in Germany in 1893. His life was checkered by a failed adolescent suicide pact in which his friend died, addiction to morphine and alcohol, periods of incarceration in prison and mental hospitals, and brushes with the Nazi regime. His most famous novels include Little Man, What Now?, The Drinker and Alone in Berlin, written in 24 days. Fallada died weeks before its publication, in February 1947 in Berlin.
Michael Hofmann is a poet and translator from the German. For Penguin he has translated four books by Hans Fallada, in addition to works by Franz Kafka, Ernst Jünger, Irmgard Keun and Jakob Wassermann.