Intrigue and foreboding

In 2009, Alone in Berlin, Hans Fallada’s masterpiece about civilian resistance to Nazism, appeared in English for the first time. Now A Small Circus, Fallada’s literary breakthrough, makes its English debut.  Both novels are admirably translated by Michael Hofmann.

The earlier novel will be of deep interest to the many admirers of Alone in Berlin. Once again, Fallada shows an uncanny prescience in his ability to interpret contemporary political developments through the lives of ordinary Germans. A Small Circus is based on real events that took place in 1929 in Neumünster, Schleswig-Holstein, lightly fictionalised by Fallada as Altholm.  Farmers, incensed by a punitive ruling from the tax office, hold a demonstration which is infiltrated by agitators seeking to ferment opposition to the democratic institutions of the Weimar Republic. Fallada’s detached, unadorned, journalistic prose charts the chain of events sparked by the demonstration, and in the process reveals the political landscape in which Nazism could flourish.