Schlump

An NYRB Classics Original

Seventeen-year-old Schlump marches off to war in 1915 because going to war is the best way to meet girls. And so he does, on his first posting, overseeing three villages in occupied France. But then Schlump is sent to the front, and the good times end.

Schlump, written by Hans Herbert Grimm, was published anonymously in 1928 and was one of the first German novels to describe World War I in all its horror and absurdity, and it remains one of the bes…