Sparrow Farm

"This latest novel by the author of 'Little Man, What Now?' recounts how Guntram, the city clerk, flew to the country to spend the winter with his newly discovered relatives. It tells of his charming cousin with whom he fell in love. It explains with eminently logical detail just why his actions let loose the tremendous forces of the supernatural which all but engulfed him and his precious Monchen.

"The characters are real. The setting is the German countryside of the author's boyhood. The style is Fallada at his best. The plot is something out of the brothers Grimm or the great Hoffman, and the resulting combination is wholly charming. 'It is unnecessary to seek a moral,' writes the Times (London), 'in what is so plainly and satisfactorily a fairy tale in the great tradition.... The larks of owls magpies, and sparrows, both genuine and human, deserve an attention one is delighted to give.'"