Once a Jailbird

‘Crooks devour each other; that is part of the game . . . ‘

For Willi Kufult, prison life means staying out of trouble, keeping his cell clean, snagging a precious piece of tobacco – and dreaming of the day of his release.

Then he gets out.

As Willi tries to make a new life for himself in Hamburg, finding a job and even love, he still cannot escape his past. Gradually he becomes sucked into a world of drink, desperation and deceit, and with one terrible act, he is ensnared in a noose of his own making . . .

Hans Fallada’s dark and moving 1934 novel brilliantly describes a seedy criminal underworld of shabby lives and violent deeds, showing how our actions always catch up with us.

‘Lit by love, the love of truth and love of humanity; it has the courage to look things in the eye, and to sketch them exactly as they are.’ -Hermann Hesse