We Are Prisoners

The autobiography of Oskar Maria Graf, his first major work, was published in 1927. It covers his early youth growing up in the village of Berg by Lake Starnberg, his cruel abuse by his older brother, his escape to Munich, where he worked as a baker, and then to anarchist communes in Switzerland. Graf is drafted into the army, where he reluctantly serves as a horse-groom on the supply trains. He is discharged as mentally unfit, spends a year in an asylum, then returns to Munich, working in a biscuit factory, starting his literary career and making money on the black market. We Are Prisoners paints a fascinating picture of bohemian life in Schwabing, the radical politics of the time, and climaxes with the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic of 1919. Many of the characters in the novel became well known artists and writers in Weimar Germany. We Are Prisoners (A Confession) is an honest and blithe personal account of momentous events. Graf's quirky literary style combines a self-deprecating and anarchic sense of humour, sympathy for the downtrodden and the Heimat genre of German culture. "He behaves disgracefully and provokes laughter and disbelief, but in so doing, he wins our hearts." THOMAS MANN Translated and introduced by Ed Walker.