Fabian

Erich Kästner first published this novel in German in 1931, and an English version followed in 1932, though that translation left out passages. Its protagonist, Jacob Fabian, writes slogans for an advertising agency in Berlin. He is a man who keeps his distance from events yet still tries to act decently, and that combination brings him to ruin as the economy, public ethics and politics come apart around him. Fabian, whose full German title marks him as a moralist, holds liberal views shaped by Enlightenment reason. He believes that a society's condition mirrors the private morals of its people, and he distrusts every rigid ideology on offer. Through his life the book gives a close, detailed picture of the crumbling Weimar Republic.

This edition restores the sections that were cut from the earlier English text because they were judged too explicit. It also contains Kästner's epilogue, which the original publisher refused to print, along with the preface he wrote for the 1952 German reissue. A foreword by the scholar Rodney Livingstone introduces the work and its context.