Wolf Among Wolves

Prior to World War II, the novels of German writer Hans Fallada (born Rudolf Ditzen) were international bestsellers. But when Jewish producers in Hollywood made his 1932 novel, Little Man, What Now? into a major motion picture, the rising Nazi Party took notice of him. After he refused to join the Party and was denounced by neighbors for alleged anti-Nazi sympathies, Fallada, unlike many other prominent artists, decided not to leave Germany. During WWII he suffered an alcohol-and-drug-fueled nervous breakdown and landed in a Nazi insane asylum, where he nonetheless managed to write—in code—the brilliant subversive novel, The Drinker. After the war, Fallada went on to write Every Man Dies Alone, based on an actual Gestapo file, but he died in 1947 of a heart attack—brought on by drug abuse just before it was published.