Buying Options

Print List Price:	$16.99
Kindle Price:	$2.99 Save $14.00 (82%)
Sold by:	Hachette Book Group Price set by seller.

Promotions apply when you purchase

Add Audible narration to your purchase for just $7.49

Deliver to your Kindle or other device

You've subscribed to ! We will preorder your items within 24 hours of when they become available. When new books are released, we'll charge your default payment method for the lowest price available during the pre-order period.

Update your device or payment method, cancel individual pre-orders or your subscription at
Your Memberships & Subscriptions

There was an error. We were unable to process your subscription due to an error. Please refresh and try again.

Enter a promotion code or Gift Card

Share <Embed>

The Hungry and the Fat: A bold new satire by the author of LOOK WHO'S BACK by [Timur Vermes, Jamie Bulloch]

Follow the Author

Timur Vermes

The Hungry and the Fat: A bold new satire by the author of LOOK WHO'S BACK Kindle Edition

by Timur Vermes (Author), Jamie Bulloch (Translator) Format: Kindle Edition

20 ratings

See all formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Kindle

"Please retry"

$2.99

—

Audible Audiobook, Unabridged

"Please retry"

$0.00

Free with your Audible trial

Hardcover

"Please retry"

$23.47

$15.27

$3.99

Paperback

"Please retry"

$16.99

$11.54

$5.00

By the author of LOOK WHO'S BACK, a radical and bold satire in inequitable times.

"Whizz-bang energy and gleeful imaginative savagery" Sam Leith, Guardian

"More than mere satire, it's a book that engages deeply" Alex Preston, Financial Times

"An immensely enjoyable read" Daniel Hahn, Spectator

"A caustic, clever satire with a powerful emotional core" Becky Long, Irish Times

"Satirical, sharp, believable . . . Brilliant" Rick O'Shea, RTE

REFUGEE CAMPS IN AFRICA ARE SWELLING

And Europe has closed its borders. The refugees have no future, no hope, and no money to pay the vast sums now demanded by people smugglers. The only thing they have is time.

AND THEN AN ANGEL ARRIVES FROM REALITY T.V.

When model and star presenter Nadeche Hackenbusch comes to film at the largest of the camps, one young refugee sees a unique opportunity: to organise a march to Europe, in full view of the media. Viewers are gripped as the vast convoy moves closer, but the far right in Germany is regrouping and the government is at a loss. Which country will halt the refugees in their tracks?

THE HUNGRY AND THE FAT

A devastating, close-to-the-knuckle satire about the haves and have-nots in our divided world by one of Europe's finest and most perceptive writers.

Translated from the German by Jamie Bulloch

Print length

400 pages
Language

English
Publisher

MacLehose Press
Publication date

January 23, 2020
File size

5747 KB
Page Flip

Enabled
Word Wise

Enabled
Enhanced typesetting

Enabled
See all details

Timur Vermes
1,247
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $3.99

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Timur Vermes is the son of a German mother and a Hungarian father who fled the country in 1956, Vermes was born in Nuremberg in 1967. He studied history and politics and went on to become a journalist. He has written for the Abendzeitung and the Cologne Express and worked for various magazines. He has ghostwritten several books since 2007. He is the author of Look Who's Back, an international bestseller that was made into a movie by Netflix.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR: Jamie Bulloch's translations include Ruth Maier's Diary, Portrait of a Mother as a Young Women by F. C. Delius, and novels by Paulus Hochgatterer and Daniel Glattauer. --This text refers to the hardcover edition.

Review

Praise for Look Who's Back
"You know his name. You know his face. You know his hair and mustache, which are caricatured with sharp, witty minimalism on the cover of Look Who's Back, in which a baffled Adolf Hitler is returned to the even more baffled German people. Now you'll also know Timur Vermes, whose debut novel has created a sensation in Germany. [Look Who's Back] is desperately funny . . . Mr. Vermes has created an ingenious comedy of errors in which the jokes are either on Hitler's misapprehensions about the modern world or the modern world's refusal to take him at face value . . . Read this book."―Janet Maslin, The New York Times

"Very funny . . . The frisson of reading Look Who's Back comes from its seamless transition from Borscht Belt one-liners to disturbing invocations of the legacies of Nazi rule. Mr. Vermes gives us a bracingly double-sided Hitler-the arresting public speaker and astute negotiator who loves dogs and small children, and also the fanatical champion of political violence, global tyranny and ethnic cleansing . . . Translator Jamie Bulloch helps by providing a glossary at the close of the book, but what people will remember is his perfect rendering of the ridiculously orotund, yet oddly compelling, manner of Hitler's speechifying."―Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal

"Look Who's Back is Hitler satire at its best . . . while there has been much debate over whether or why it's appropriate to laugh at Vermes's relentless Hitler satire, this well-researched and uproariously cringe-worthy book makes it hard not to . . . It is ultimately a sort of commentary on Hitler's first ascent to power-on the point at which a charismatic man starts being taken seriously, and what that transition entails . . . laugh-out-loud funny."―Kira Bindrim, Newsweek

"[A] wickedly satiric first novel . . . Hitler is, of course, deadly serious, and the dissonance between his earnest bigotry and the vacuousness of our media-soaked age is the comic grist that propels the novel toward its truly ironic conclusion. While German journalist Vermes has a good deal to say about the state of contemporary Germany, his reach here is more universal, as he's crafted a sardonic send-up of a media and a world where the message doesn't matter so long as your ratings are high and your videos go viral on YouTube."―Library Journal --This text refers to the hardcover edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07SNT2X43
Publisher ‏ : ‎ MacLehose Press (January 23, 2020)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ January 23, 2020
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 5747 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 400 pages
Lending ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled

Best Sellers Rank: #1,571,813 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #86 in Refugees
- #169 in Public Policy Immigration
- #502 in Immigration Policy

Customer Reviews:
20 ratings

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Timur Vermes

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Timur Vermes was born in Nuremberg in 1967, the son of a German mother and a Hungarian father who fled Hungary in 1956. He studied history and politics and went on to become a journalist. He has written for various newspapers and magazines, and has ghostwritten several books since 2007. This is his first novel, and is currently being made into a film by Mythos in a co-production with Constantin Film.

Customer reviews

5 star		35%
4 star		30%
3 star		12%
2 star		7%
1 star		16%

How customer reviews and ratings work

Top review from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

SC

Biting satire that could have benefited from a bit of pruning

Reviewed in the United States on March 29, 2020

Rounded up from 3.5 stars.

Like "Look Who's Back," Timur Vermes's first book, which I loved, "The Hungry and the Fat" is biting satire just shy of absurdity. I didn't enjoy this one as much, though. The middle part sagged and dragged, so much that I almost lost interest in discovering how it was all going to play out, but then the final third or so redeemed the rest of the book. The ending was both surprising (to me, anyway) yet inevitable. The entire thread involving the embedded women's-magazine writer, her beyond-purple prose, and her absolute self-centeredness was brilliant. The conceit of not giving the names of a few of the main characters seemed arbitrary and distracting, and the descriptions of the settings outside of Germany were too vague for my tastes. The entire conceit, however, was original, thought-provoking, and in parts very very funny.

Thank you, NetGalley and Quercus, for providing me with a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

BookWorm

Memorable, with a powerful end after a slow start and middle

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 10, 2021

Verified Purchase

An author who wrote his first novel about the impact on 21st century of a time travelling Hitler is not someone who shies from controversy. Timur Vimes has followed up his divisive but brilliant 'Look Who's Back' with a story about refugees. A celebrity presenter has travelled to a refugee camp in sub-Saharan Africa to make a television show about the people living there. But things take an unexpected turn when she becomes involved with a refugee and together they decide to walk - along with 150,000 others - all the way to Germany. A simple and well organised initiative, the march slowly but inexorably draws closer to Europe - and tensions rise as the politicians realise the growing number of migrants might actually make it...

The book is told from multiple viewpoints, including television executives, politicians, journalists, the presenter and her migrant lover, and the brutal but effective gang boss who manages the logistics of the operation. Like the march itself, the novel has a slow start - in fact, it even drags in places. But things hot up in the last 20% as events spiral into a tense finale.

The disturbing thing about the book is that it is plausible - nothing that happens is beyond the realms of possibility. The refugee march concept is so simple it is quite surprising people haven't tried it, whilst the less-than-charitable reactions of the Europeans to the approaching convoy are all too likely. It's also important to remember this is not such a hypothetical situation - hundreds of thousands of desperate people are already trying to get to Europe now, just in a more dispersed and less visible way - and are dying in the attempt. The novel just funnels a genuine problem into a distilled and unignorable format.

As such it's one of those satires that doesn't feel very satirical. There are a couple of humorous bits but it isn't really a funny story. Challenging and thought-provoking, certainly. Gripping and hard-hitting in the last part, and a bit dull in the first part. It's true you can get away with more by framing something as a satire, and that's fair enough, but like a lot of satirical novels it's uncomfortably close to the mark.

I don't think this is as good as 'Look Who's Back', partly because I found it hard to form a strong bond with any of the characters, and the political bits are overdone. Also for readers who don't have a passing knowledge of German politics (the acronyms for the parties and what they roughly stand for - right wing/left wing etc.) will get lost in some of the chapters. I follow European politics at a basic level and had heard of most of the parties but even I didn't quite get all the subtle distinctions.

That said, it's certainly a book that I will remember reading. I'm fascinated to see what topic Vermes takes on for his next offering.

Edwynmccann

Prepare to be disappointed

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 17, 2021

Verified Purchase

The idea behind this story is such a good basis for a great story but is unfortunately let down by the execution. While it is a parody it is simply not interesting enough to hold the reader. I gave up 50 percent of the way through. The writing isn't bad but the characters do not hold the interest. At a time when this subject is much in the news, a more realistic and serious case study would have held the interest much better.

See all reviews