Erich Kästner Libros

Jakob Fabian es un joven germanista que se dedica a la publicidad en el Berlín de comienzos de los años treinta. Espectador escéptico y mordaz de su tiempo, se considera a sí mismo un moralista desconcertado en un mundo en que los valores éticos se desmoronan. Fabian, héroe confuso y, en el fondo, indefenso, recorre las calles de la gran metrópolis, conoce sus bares y prostíbulos, es víctima del desempleo y el desamor en esta sátira chispeante en la que la exageración sirve para dar el mejor retrato de toda una época, y que, en palabras del propio autor, pretendía servir de advertencia a una Europa sumida en la depresión espiritual y económica, a punto de precipitarse al abismo.

It's the oddest of all odd things, when two girls who have never met before suddenly stand before each other at summer camp - and discover that they're the spitting image of each other. Louise is from Vienna and has long, curly locks; Lottie is from Munich and wears her hair in two severe plaits - but that's truly the only difference between them. Louise and Lottie decide to discover the secret behind their similarity: when the holiday is over, Louise returns to Munich as Lottie, and Lottie to Vienna as Louise.

Martin's school is no ordinary school. There are snowball fights, kidnappings, cakes, a parachute jump, a mysterious man called 'No-Smoking' who lives in a railway carriage and a play about a flying classroom. As the Christmas holidays draw near, Martin and his friends - nervous Uli, cynical Sebastian, Johnny, who was rescued by a sea captain, and Matthias, who is always hungry (particularly after a meal) - are preparing for the end of term festivities. But there are surprises, sadness and trouble on the way - and a secret that changes everything. The Flying Classroom is a magical, thrilling and bittersweet story about friendship, fun and being brave when you are at your most scared. (It also features a calf called Eduard, but you will have to read it to find out why).

'Matches, buy my matches, ladies and gents!' calls Luise Pogge, a.k.a. 'Dot', evening after evening, standing on Weidendammer Bridge in the middle of Berlin. Of course, her wealthy parents have no idea of her whereabouts, believing her to be in the safe care of her nanny, Miss Andacht. But Miss Andacht is being blackmailed by her shady fiancé, which is where Dot comes in. Anton, on the other hand, has to beg because he and his mother are paupers, and desperate. When the two children make friends on the streets of Berlin, Dot, who is no fool, has a brilliant idea which is sure to solve both their problems, and in the process they even solve a dastardly crime...

First published in German in 1931, the first English edition of this book was published in 1932 by Jonathan Cape in an expurgated edition. Set in the crumbling Berlin of the 1920s, it is a tale of despair. This edition is unexpurgated. The author also wrote Emil and the Detectives.

A small boy has his money stolen while on his way to Berlin but tracks down the thief with the help of some friends.

Going to the Dogs is set in Berlin after the crash of 1929 and before the Nazi takeover, years of rising unemployment and financial collapse. The moralist in question is Jakob Fabian, “aged thirty-two, profession variable, at present advertising copywriter . . . weak heart, brown hair,” a young man with an excellent education but permanently condemned to a low-paid job without security in the short or the long run. What’s to be done? Fabian and friends make the best of it—they go to work though they may be laid off at any time, and in the evenings they go to the cabarets and try to make it with girls on the make, all the while making a lot of sharp-sighted and sharp-witted observations about politics, life, and love, or what may be. Not that it makes a difference. Workers keep losing work to new technologies while businessmen keep busy making money, and everyone who can goes out to dance clubs and sex clubs or engages in marathon bicycle events, since so long as there’s hope of running into the right person or (even) doing the right thing, well—why stop? Going to the Dogs, in the words of introducer Rodney Livingstone, “brilliantly renders with tangible immediacy the last frenetic years [in Germany] before 1933.” It is a book for our time too.