This was an amazing, compulsive and often quite shocking read. All the above was amplified by the fact that its content is largely autobiographical, written by Fallada when in a lunatic asylum. As the novel's title suggests, The Drinker charts the narrator's descent from respectable businessman to depraved drunkard, one culminating act sends him to jail and from there to asylum. There are some inevitable parallels with Zola's L'Assommoir and Hamilton's Hangover Square, but the unashamed naturalism (or new objectivity) of Fallada's first-person narrator magnifies the impact, highlighting the depths to which a person might sink, their internalized justifications when seeking alcoholic fulfillment. There is a broader consideration too on Fallada's part about what constitutes ‘normality’ and how ‘outsiders’ are treated, particularly in a regime as austere and intolerant as the Nazis. The results in the case of The Drinker are not pretty: any hope for redemption is crushed; there is only defeat: nine and a half out of ten.
By Hans Fallada