Wolf Among Wolves

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First translated into English by Phillip Owens and published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 1938

A Word to the Reader

The author has been reproached by some readers of his novel Once We Had a Child for making his hero, Johannes Gäntschow, such a brute. He has read this complaint with some astonishment, for as he wanted to portray a brutal man he could not depict a kind one. To avoid similar complaints the author warns in this preface (which can be glanced through in a moment at any bookstore) that Wolf Among Wolves deals with sinful, weak, sensual, erring, unstable men, the children of an age disjointed, mad and sick. All in all, it is a book for those who are, in every sense, adult.

Another not superfluous observation is that this is a novel, and therefore a product of the imagination. Everything in it—characters, events, places, names—is invented, and even if time or place should seem to point to a definite person, the novel is nevertheless only invention, fancy, fiction, story.

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