One day in January 1933 I was sitting with my esteemed publisher Rowohlt in Schlichters Wine Bar in Berlin, enjoying a convivial dinner. Our lady wives and a few bottles of good Franconian wine kept us company. We were, as they say in the Scriptures, filled with good wine, and on this occasion it had a good effect on us too. … it had put me in in a cheerful and rather jocular, bantering mood, which made me the ideal companion for Rowohlt, who is increasingly transformed by alcohol into a huge two-hundred-pound baby. He sat at the table with alcohol evaporating, in a manner of speaking, from every pore of his body.
from A Stranger in my own Country by Hans Fallada (2009). Recommended.
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