“A Small Man, What’s Next?” is one of Fallada’s best-known novels: a truthful and troubling chronicle of the life of a young German couple on the eve of the arrival of Nazism. Johannes Pinneberg and his wife Lamb—these are “small people” trying to preserve love and dignity in a world that is rapidly losing its human face. Losing a job, humiliation, fear of the future—everything is described with harsh precision, yet without gloom: the novel carries a bright, stubborn belief in simple human happiness.
This is a book about a time of anxiety—and about those who lived through it. And like all true literature, it remains surprisingly relevant.