survived almost three centuries and will survive many more. It is a story of the most basic kind of grandeur -- gaudy, wild, raw, amusing, rollicking and ragged, boiling with life, on intimate terms with death and evil -- but in the end, contrite and fully tired of a world wasting itself in blood, pillage, and lust, but immortal in the miserable splendour of its sins." Mike Mitchell's superb new translation allows us to enjoy one of the great works of European literature and the first German bestselling novel.

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