Going to the Dogs: The Story of a Moralist

Money makes the world go round, or so the nasty little master of ceremonies in Cabaret sang suggestively. A lack of cash tends to send ordinary life spinning ever further out of control. In times of recession, such as the present, it may offer slight consolation to ponder an even worse financial collapse, such as the crash of 1929. The German writer Erich Kästner's brilliant satire Going to the Dogs, also known as Fabian, was first published in 1931, and an English translation followed within a year. The book acts as what Kästner described as a "distorted mirror" of the reality of mass unemployment and despair. It is set in the world so vividly evoked by the painters Otto Dix and George Grosz and by the literary geniuses Joseph Roth and Hans Fallada, both of whom grasped the human tragedy magnificently. Kästner identified the absurdity, and this remarkable little novel is very funny, often shocking and ultimately profound.