A novel by Kurt Tucholsky, one of the earliest resisters of the Nazi regime.

Castle Gripsholm is the best and most beloved work by Kurt Tucholsky, a journalist, satirist, critic, polemicist, and poet. Translated by Michael Hofmann, this novel first appears to be the simple tale of an enchanted summer holiday in the Swedish countryside but soon transforms into a provocative parable of the evil awaiting Europe as the Nazis came to power. “One of the most brilliant writers of republican Germany. . . Tucholsky was known and feared for his sharp wit by all his enemies in Germany. More than anyone else, he foresaw what was coming there. What his readers enjoyed as capricious fantasies of a clever satirist were enacted in bitter reality.” —Kurt Tucholsky’s obituary, January 10, 1936, The New York Times “The author, a polemical journalist during the last days of the Weimar Republic, chose in this, his only novel, to write about the pleasures of wine and women and the gratifications of friendship, and to do so in prose so luminous and exuberant that the bitterness of real life in the children’s home seems an intrusion. He has given us characters of wit and charm, who, even though they rescue one forlorn child, are powerless against the rising tide of horror.” —Publishers Weekly “Kurt Tucholsky wrote songs for Berlin revues, ridiculed the Nazis. . . and found refuge in Sweden only to take his own life . . . . There is scarcely any figure in English literature with quite the same degree of acid corrosiveness. One has the sense that all our little disappointments—in love, in business, in politics—are but manifestations of the collective disappointment that is life itself.” —Michael J. Lewis, Commentary