Every Man Dies Alone is the final novel by German author Hans Fallada. Shortly after the end of World War II, Fallada was asked to write an anti-fascist novel to support ongoing denazification efforts. Fallada, who had spent the war in Germany and suffered Nazi prosecution, chose the true story of Otto and Elise Hampel as the basis for his book. The Hampels were working-class parents whose only son died during the invasion of France. They created postcards imploring fellow Germans to resist the Nazis and left them in mailboxes and apartment stairways. Because the contents of the cards were potentially a capital crime, most who found them promptly turned them over to the Gestapo. The Hampels were eventually betrayed and sentenced to death by infamous Nazi judge Roland Freisler. Fallada included reproductions of several Hampel postcards in Every Man Dies Alone, bearing slogans such as "Mother! The Führer has murdered my son. Mother! The Führer will murder your sons too."Hans Fallada (1893-1947) wrote Every Man Dies Alone in 24 days and died just weeks before its publication. His relatively early death at age 53 was caused by morphine addiction, alcohol abuse, financial stress and multiple stays in insane asylums. During a stint in a Nazi asylum, Fallada used a real but long and deliberately delayed assignment from Joseph Goebbels to receive paper. Instead of the ordered anti-Semitic piece, he wrote an autobiographical novel called The Drinker in overlapping text to avoid detection. Fallada's work was popular in Germany and several other European countries, but remained obscure in the English-speaking world until 2009, when Melville House published translations of Little Man, What Now?, The Drinker and Every Man Dies Alone. On September 10, Melville House released a 10th-anniversary edition of Every Man Dies Alone ($18.99, 9781612198262). --Tobias Mutter