The Bare Life Naturally, the famous stories from the Murkelei are among Fallada's finest. However, his tales written since the 1920s alongside his work on novels are still to be discovered – written for newspapers to earn a living, for relaxation, or as sketches for the next major work. He almost always drew his subjects from personal experiences, and not least, Hans Fallada once again proves himself in these 33 stories spanning three decades as a chronicler of ordinary people and their daily struggles: amusing to bitterly ironic, brutally honest, or hopelessly romantic. Here we find Fallada's strength, as these small works are often successful in an effortless way, whether as stylistic exercises or as snapshots, sketches that later reappear in a modified form in a novel; in this way, precisely because Fallada is so close to his own life.