Lilly and Her Slave

Name: Lilly and Her Slave
Brand: Tantor Audio
Availability: InStock
Author: Hans Fallada
ISBN: 9798765085226

Author: Hans Fallada, Alexandra Roesch

Narrator: Christine Rendel

Unabridged: 8 hr 5 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 08/22/2023

Categories: Fiction, World Literature, Literary Fiction

Synopsis

It was the turning point before he became a bestselling author: Hans Fallada handed himself in to the police in September 1925, following repeated cases of embezzlement to finance his alcohol and morphine addiction.

At the time, a court-appointed doctor was assigned to assess the extent to which Fallada could be made accountable. This expert opinion, thought to have been lost, was only recently rediscovered. It is an extraordinary find, because it includes unpublished and rewritten stories by Fallada that focus on hitherto taboo topics such as abortion.

The title character, Lilly, sets out to "play" with a young man, but ends up losing control of the situation. Barely able to hide her questionable actions, she ends up in a sanatorium, where she engages in a bizarre duel of reciprocal manipulation with another patient.

Marie and Thilde, the protagonists of two other stories, are strong women who rebel against the pre-established patterns imposed on them by society, while two male outsiders, Pogg and Robinson, seek refuge and hope in a prison cell.

These stories reveal to a new generation Fallada's immense gifts and his intense battles with the dynamics of human relationships.

About Hans Fallada

Hans Fallada (1893-1947) was the pen name of German author Rudolf Ditzen, whose books were international bestsellers on a par with those of his countrymen Thomas Mann and Hermann Hesse. He opted to stay in Germany when the Nazis came to power, and eventually had a nervous breakdown when he was put under pressure to write anti-Semitic books. He was cast into a Nazi insane asylum, where he secretly wrote The Drinker. Immediately after the war he wrote his last two novels, Nightmare in Berlin and Alone in Berlin, but he died before either book could be published.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Sam on December 05, 2022

The six short stories that comprise this volume - Robinson in Prison, The Machinery of Love, Lilly and Her Slave, The Great Love, Pogg, the Coward, and Who Can Be the Judge? - were found in the papers of a psychiatrist whose patient in the mid-1920s was the writer Rudolf Ditzen, the real name of Han......more

Goodreads review by Digdem on June 09, 2024

Hans Fallada’nın tesadüfi olarak ortaya çıkan öykülerinden oluşan bir seçki Kendinden Kaçamayanın Öyküsü. Fallada, morfin ve alkol bağımlılığı sebebiyle yaşadığı maddi sıkıntılar içindeyken, zimmetine para geçirmekten suçlu bulunur. Bu dava dosyasına adli tıp uzmanı Ernst Ziemke, Fallada ile ilgili......more

Goodreads review by zuzanna on July 22, 2023

such a beautiful way of looking at love......more

Goodreads review by Richard on January 04, 2024

This collection of Fallada's early short stories was only discovered and published in 2021. It was worth reading, but perhaps not surprisingly it isn't as impressive as his better-known works. Of the three shorter works only "Pogg, the Coward" was particularly interesting, due to its clear autobiogr......more

Goodreads review by John on November 25, 2022

These stories have recently been discovered from papers of the psychiatrist to the author when he was in prison. The two major pieces display a very jaundiced view of the quality of relationship within marriage. As long as you do not expect a cheerful view of life Mr Fallada as a writer stylisticall......more