"This is an heroic book, brave, fearless and honest. It is necessary reading."-The Sunday Times (London)

"Genuinely tragic and beautiful . . . [Fallada's] perfectly horrifying, horrifyingly perfect novel is the story of himself rejected by society and returning the insult."-New Statesman

Written in an encrypted notebook while he was incarcerated in a Nazi insane asylum and discovered after his death, The Drinker may be Hans Fallada's most breath taking piece of craftsmanship. It is an intense yet absorbing study of the descent into drunkenness by an intelligent man who fears he's lost it all. Moving, often funny, and told in a galvanizing bravura style.