Mr. Brecher's Fiasco

by Martin Kessel

"Infused with the spirit of 1920s Berlin, Mr. Brecher's Fiasco is one of the great modern novels about the urban heart of Germany. It was a time of hope and hyperinflation, sexual liberation and repression, industrialization and unemployment, and constant political instability - with the shadow of fascism looming ever larger. Available here for the first time in English, Kessel's novel draws upon the major intellectual and social issues of Weimar Germany and is a satire of the Berlin workplace and the white-collar workers of the city's mushrooming bureaucracy. His story captures a moment in which office workers - originally a small, respected, and privileged sector of the workforce - transformed into a large and amorphous common class of workers." "In the offices of a large media conglomerate responsible for all kinds of advertising, Max Brecher considers himself the intellectual among the clerks. He reflects on the personal relations in the office, his own situation as an employee and