The writing life of Hans Fallada (1893-1947) spanned all the eras of the first 50 momentous and disastrous years of Germany's 20th century. His own self-destructive yet creative life is told in this work, with the use of many previously unpublished sources. Fallada, whose most famous novel, Little Man - What Now? (also published by Libris: ISBN 1-870352-15-7), was most famous for his portrayal of ordinary people in extraordinary, generally adverse, times. He stayed in Germany after 1933 and was officially declared undesirable but continued to write.