Ludwig Bemelmans. First edition, first printing. New York: The Viking Press, 1945. Both price-clipped dust jacket (in a mylar wrapper) and hardcover are in Very Good+ condition. Illustrated endpapers. No writing or markings found in this well-preserved edition, 153 pp. Illustrated with 14 full-page color plates of Bemelmans' watercolors. Bemelmans is best-known for the Madeline series of picture books. A scarce and collectible copy.
Bemelmans work has been “described as a gentle satire of Nazi Germany, belonging somewhere on the continuum of works about the Second World War with Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-5 and Mel Brooks' The Producers.”
“The novel is set behind the front lines in Regensburg, where Bemelmans grew up (he was born in a French-speaking part of Austria that is now in Italy; English was his third language after French and German). For most of those at home-the women, the old men, for the unbelievers-hope had run away like a thief in the night.”
