Happy Man! by Hermann Kesten first edition 1935 German-Jewish exiled writer

KESTEN, Hermann (1900-1996). Happy Man! Translated from the German by Edward Crankshaw. London: John Lane, The Bodley Head, 1935.

Octavo; 284pp. with 4 pages of advertisements at the rear. Original purple cloth lettered in red. Light rubbing to extremities and a shade faded on the spine; a very good copy, with toning, scattered spotting, short marginal tears and small losses at the spine ends and corners of the wrapper. Front flap clipped, with the reduced price of 3s 6d net overprinted in red. First English edition, a remainder or later cheap issue, using the original sheets.

Originally published as Gluckliche Menschen in 1931, the novel follows the interlocking lives of Berliners over a week in November 1929. Centred on the frustrated marriage plans of Max and Else, its ironic title introduces a darkly comic portrait of middle-class ambitions, family conflict and disillusionment in the closing years of the Weimar Republic.

Kesten was a German-Jewish novelist and editor associated with the New Objectivity movement. His writings were banned by the Nazis, and he fled Germany in 1933. In exile he helped sustain German-language literature through the Amsterdam publisher Allert de Lange, later assisting persecuted writers and artists through the Emergency Rescue Committee in America.

The striking pictorial jacket with a silhouette of the Brandenburg Gate in the background is by Victor Reinganum (1907-1995), the British artist and illustrator subsequently celebrated for his jacket designs for Muriel Spark, including The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. A rare book to find with the jacket.