Hans Fallada

Hans Fallada was one of the best-known German writers of the twentieth century. Born on 21 July 1893 in Greifswald as Rudolf Wilhelm Adolf Ditzen, he took his pen name from a Brothers Grimm fairy tale. His most famous works include the novels Little Man, What Now? and The Drinker. Fallada died from an overdose of morphine on 5 February 1947 in Berlin.

Michael Hofmann is the author of several books of poems and a book of criticism, Behind the Lines, and the translator of many modern and contemporary authors, including Joseph Roth. Penguin publish his translations of Kafka’s Metamorphosis and Other Stories, Ernst Jünger’s Storm of Steel and Irmgard Keun’s Child of All Nations.