Wolf Among Wolves

This brilliantly rendered historical novel is a masterpiece matched perhaps only by Charles Dickens. Hans Fallada is a talented genius of the narrative composition. His characters come to life as if in a movie. No book that I am aware of has ever held such suspenseful intrigue for 793 pages as this one. It even surpasses "War and Peace." This book, written in 1936-1937 still resonants with relevancy to our contemporary 2lst Century. It is an inspiring tale of perservance during political, social, and economic upheaval. This beautiful novel is a masterpiece of critical realism. It represents a clarion call to humanism and compassion amidst economic devastation. It depicts a depraved world ruined by incompetence, indifference, and greed. The protagonist Wolf Pagel, lives among wolves, but refuses to become one of them. This wonderful book, a hundred years before its time, declares that the individual can rise above the social and moral ills of his time.One of the most moving passages asserts what courage is: "I used to think that courage meant standing up straight when a shell exploded and taking your share of the shrapnel. Now I know that's mere stupidity and bravado; courage means keeping going when something becomes completely unbearable." Fallada's love for storytelling is marvelous! You come to know, respect and understand his characters. Like Robert Musil's "The Man With No Qualities," "Wolf Among Wolves," is a brilliant study of the psychology of individuals in everyday life, entangled in the circumstances of his time. The novel also gives us direct insight of how economical devastation and social depravity leads to fear and insecurity and which can then result in Fascism. The novel itself, in spite of the brutality of life, manages to be optimistic in its view of humankind. Fallada celebrates the idea "that the brave manage to keep afloat, whereas the unfit fail." It is a marvelous depiction of how love endures, and that faith in mankind can be redeemed. Above all books that I have read, Hans Fallada's "Wolf Among Wolves" deserves the Nobel Prize for Literature, Posthumously.