Iron Gustav A Berlin Family Chronicle

Every so often you come across a book so finely wrought that you have no doubt about its status as a literary classic. Iron Gustav is one ... The writing is visual, vivid and visceral, the irony delicate, and even when it is cynical the novel doesn't sneer ... Fallada's descriptions of material degradation and squalor equal those of Dickens and Dostoyevsky. He has the gift for complex narrative of Thomas Mann combined with the page-turning powers of great thriller writers such as Raymond Chandler, and the structural control of a great painter or composer ... This [Penguin Modern Classics edition] is the first authentic version of not just a classic, but a masterpiece of world literature Paul Levy Wall Street Journal