The Book of Hors d'Oeuvres and Canapes by Arno Schmidt

Arno Schmidt (1914-1979) was born in Hamburg-Hamm, a working-class neighborhood in Germany. He was drafted into the army with 1940 and spent the rest of the war in the artillery in a flak base in Norway. He temporarily worked as an interpreter for the British military police after being imprisoned as a prisoner of war for eight months. Leviathan, his debut work, was published in 1949. Schmidt relocated to the town of Bargfeld near Celle in 1958. He created some of the most important works of postwar German literature over the next two decades, many of which are available in translation via Dalkey Archive Publishing.