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Author: Grimmelshausen, Hans Jakob Christoffel von

Classic fiction (pre c 1945)

Published on 1 March 2018 by Penguin Books Ltd (Penguin Classics) in the United Kingdom.

Paperback | 496 pages
135 x 116 x 23 | 340g

‘Gaudy, wild, raw, amusing, rollicking and ragged, boiling with life, on intimate terms with death and evil – but in the end, contrite and fully tired of a world wasting itself in blood, pillage and lust’ Thomas MannA story of war in all its absurdity and horror, this incomparable novel describes the fortunes of a young boy travelling through a world ravaged by conflict, and the terrible things he witnesses. Written by someone who fought in the Thirty Years War which decimated Europe in the seventeenth century, it combines brutal, documentary realism with fantastical, knockabout humour to depict a universe turned upside down. This pioneering work of fiction is considered to be the first great German novel.

Translated by J. A. Underwood with an Introduction by Kevin Cramer