The Drinker

Praise

“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 Statesman
 
“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