Two novellas, available for the first time in English, "The Spider's Web", reflecting the terrifying picture of German politics between the wars, and "Zipper and His Father", evoking the melancholy world of clerks and Viennese coffee houses and the flashy world of German cinema in the 1920s. The author left Germany in 1933 and became a key figure among the anti-Nazi emigres of pre-war Paris. He was brought up on the eastern frontiers of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and spent time in Russia during the First World War and later as a journalist. Other novels by the same author include "Job: A Simple Man", "The Emperor's Tomb", "Confession of a Murderer", "Tarabas" and "Hotel Savoy" (all available from Chatto), "The Radetsky March" (Penguin) and "Weights and Measures" and "Flight without End" (Dent). "The Spider's Web" is being filmed in Germany.