Going to the Dogs: The Story of a Moralist (New York Review Books Classics)
“Kästner (1899-1974) had a message to convey about the crumbling of Berlin's moral standards, and he delivered it successfully….but it is Fabian himself who explains things best when he comments ironically, ‘We live in stirring times . . . and they get more stirring every day.'’” —Publishers Weekly “Like his hero Fabian, Kästner was not a cynic as a saddened idealist; the two conditions look much the same, but the latter is more painful….Fabianis a "key novel" of the Weimar Republic in its last years. It is a notably efficient novel, with little of the metaphysical resonance of [Thomas Mann’s]Doctor Faustusor that book’s soul-searching, but offering instead a series of moral tableaux, rendered the cooler by the chapter titles, in the form of newspaper headings.”—The Times Literary Supplement “Graceful, vivid and distinguished…a little masterpiece of pathos and calamity.” —Michael Sadleir “Damned for its improper subject-matter, [Going to the Dogs] showed the crumbling Berlin of Christopher Isherwood’s stories with something of Isherwood’s sharp intelligence, but a far more tragic sense of implication.”—The Times Literary Supplement “I am a great admirer ofFabian[original title] and have read it at least twice.” —Graham Greene