Once a Jailbird
Once a Jailbird
By Hans Fallada
Translated by Eric Sutton
Revised by Nicholas Jacobs, Gardis Cramer von Laue, and Linden Lawson
“Absolutely on the money, from the slang of the cons, to the refuge of its hero in the blissful hermitage of prison.”—Albert Ehrenstein
For Willi Kufult, prison life means staying out of trouble, keeping his cell clean, snagging a precious piece of tobacco, and dreaming of the day of his release.
Then he gets out.
As Willi tries to make a new life for himself in Hamburg, finding a job and even love, he still cannot escape his past. Gradually he becomes sucked into a world of drink, desperation, and deceit, and, with one terrible act, he is ensnared in a noose of his own making...
Hans Fallada, whose famous works include Every Man Dies Alone and The Drinker, brilliantly crafts this dark and moving novel, originally written in 1934, as he describes a seedy criminal underworld of shabby lives and violent deeds, showing how our actions always catch up with us. His work is unparalleled, and Once a Jailbird is a fantastic title to add to Fallada's recently translated works.
Paperback
480 pages
Arcade Publishing, 2014
Originally published in 1934
5.5 x 1.4 x 8.2 inches
ISBN 9781611459449
Historical Fiction, Crime fiction