In September 1925, Hans Fallada handed himself in to the police. Not yet a bestselling author, Fallada had repeatedly embezzled funds to finance his alcohol and morphine addictions. Desperate to escape his demons, he sought a prison cell.

Now court documents from Fallada’s imprisonment have recently been uncovered, and with them a never-before-seen collection of short stories. Through complex characters at odds with society, Fallada explored the lived the lives of women and male outsiders.

These stories reveal to a new generation of readers Fallada’s immense gifts and his intense inner battles.

A young couple fall in love, get married and start a family, like countless young couples before them. But Lämmchen and ‘Boy’ live in Berlin in 1932, and everything is changing. As they desperately try to make ends meet amid bullying bosses, unpaid bills, monstrous mothers-in-law and Nazi streetfighters, will love be enough?

The novel that made Hans Fallada’s name as a writer, Little Man, What Now? tells the story of one of European literature’s most touching couples and is filled with an extraordinary mixture of comedy and desperation. It was published just before Hitler came to power and remains a haunting portrayal of innocents whose world is about to be swept away forever. This brilliant new translation by Michael Hofmann brings to life an entire era of austerity and turmoil in Weimar Germany.

‘An inspired work of a great writer … Fallada is a genius. The “Little Man” is Mr Everybody’ Beryl Bainbridge

‘There are chapters which pluck the nerves…there are chapters which raise the spirits like a fine day in the country. The truth and variety of the characterization is superb…it recognizes that the world is not to be altered with moral fables’ Graham Greene

‘Fallada deserves high praise for having reported so realistically, so truthfully, with such closeness to life’ Herman Hesse

‘Fallada at his best’ Philip Hensher

‘Performs the most astounding task, of taking us to a moment before history’ Los Angeles Review of Books

April, 1945. The war is over, yet Dr Doll – the mayor of small town in Russian-occupied north-east Germany – lives in constant fear. Haunted by nightmarish images of the bombsite in which he and his fellow Germans are trapped, he wishes to vanquish the demon of collective guilt, but he is unable to right any wrongs. Fleeing to Berlin, he and his young wife find solace in morphine addiction, as they try to make their way in the chaos of a city torn apart by war.

Written with Fallada’s distinctive power and vividness, Nightmare in Berlin captures the demoralised and desperate atmosphere of post-war Germany in a way that has never been matched or surpassed.

The translation of this work was supported by a grant from the Goethe-Institut which is funded by the German Ministry of the Arts.

It is summer, 1929, and in a small German town a storm is brewing. The shabby reporter Tredup leads a precarious existence working for the Pomeranian Chronicle – until he takes some photographs that offer the chance to make a fortune. In Krüger’s bar, the farmers are plotting their revenge on greedy officials. A mysterious travelling salesman from Berlin , Henning, is stirring up trouble – but no one knows why. Meanwhile the Nazis grow stronger and the Communists fight them in the streets. And at the centre of it all, the Mayor, ‘Fatty’ Gareis, seeks the easy life even as events spiral beyond his control.

As tensions erupt between workers and bosses, town and country, Left and Right, alliances are broken, bribes are taken and plots are hatched, until the tension spills over into violence.

‘Uncommonly vivid and original’ Robert Musil

‘Real love and real humanity’ Hermann Hesse

‘The best account of small-town Germany … so terribly genuine, it is frightening’ Kurt Tucholsky

‘This novel’s genius … lies in Fallada’s ability to reveal … as well as to analyse the macabre game of musical chairs that was the Weimar Republic. Fallada gives us front-row seats to Germany’s decade-long quest for a sacrificial scapegoat that culminated in the Nazi takeover … Two years after Alone in Berlin‘s runaway success, A Small Circus continues the Fallada revival that owes so much to the efforts of its translator, the poet Michael Hofmann’ André Naffis-Sahely, Independent

‘Fallada creates characters with Dickensian prodigality, each yokel, hack, pig and pen-pusher brought to life in Michael Hofmann’s beautifully judged translation … a generous, life-affirming treat’ Jake Kerridge, Telegraph

‘Michael Hofmann … comes as close as possible to giving us Fallada’s work in all its coarse, humorous, immediate, tragic glory’ Charlotte Moore, Spectator

‘Not for the first time, all praise is due to Michael Hofmann’s art and feel for nuance. His translation catches the many voices – some exasperated, others bewildered, a few downright angry – that make this bold, exuberant and candid narrative sizzle with life and the relentlessly shocking reality of it all’ Irish Times

‘Fallada’s own experiences as a regional journalist in north Germany underlie the action, and it is this sense of realism, combined with an ear for dialogue and an acute understanding of human frailty, that make the novel such an authentic portrayal of an imploding era’ Ben Hutchinson, Observer

Inspired by a true story, Hans Fallada’s Alone in Berlin is a gripping wartime thriller following one ordinary man’s determination to defy the tyranny of Nazi rule

Berlin, 1940, and the city is filled with fear. At the house on 55 Jablonski Strasse, its various occupants try to live under Nazi rule in their different ways: the bullying Hitler loyalists the Persickes, the retired judge Fromm and the unassuming couple Otto and Anna Quangel. Then the Quangels receive the news that their beloved son has been killed fighting in France. Shocked out of their quiet existence, they begin a silent campaign of defiance, and a deadly game of cat and mouse develops between the Quangels and the ambitious Gestapo inspector Escherich. When petty criminals Kluge and Borkhausen also become involved, deception, betrayal and murder ensue, tightening the noose around the Quangels’ necks …

This Penguin Classics edition contains an afterword by Geoff Wilkes, as well as facsimiles of the original Gestapo file which inspired the novel.

‘Terrific … a fast-moving, important and astutely deadpan thriller’
Irish Times

‘An unrivalled and vivid portrait of life in wartime Berlin’
Philip Kerr

‘To read Fallada’s testament to the darkest years of the 20th century is to be accompanied by a wise, somber ghost who grips your shoulder and whispers into your ear: “This is how it was. This is what happened”‘
The New York Times