I loved the movie, so I'm curious to finally read the book that sparked it.
Cheap German paperback edition (Reclam).

Reserviert als Wishlist Tag für Satay-Spiess.

I've now re-read this brief novel, some 10 years after the last time. If at all possible, I liked it even better now; it's the kind of story that seems to hold some special significance, depending on (or regardless of?) where ever you seem to be in life. Also, it's almost shocking how little dated it is, almost 80 years later.

I was rather annoyed by the annotation though (this edition has a vocabulary section at the bottom of the pages, and an extra appendix on slang and dialectal variants at the back); a lot of the translations seemed somehow "off" to me, some of them even missing the point, in one case that I noticed, being plain wrong. (When Candy asks "where it's at" about the future house, he literally means location, rather than "was Sache ist".)
I'm actually glad I didn't have to read this in school and struggle with clumsy attempts at translation and interpretation, but got to enjoy this on a more immediate and personal level. It doesn't get much better than this.

Ab die Post nach Hamburg!
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Vielen Dank und viel Spaß mit dem Buch!

Thanks a lot for this wishlist book. Since I had some difficulties with my last attempt to read Steinbeck in original language, I was happy to see some explanations on the bottom of the pages. But obviously they are not very good .... we will see.
Thanks a lot also for the labels that traveled together with the book. :-)

I was very happy about the clumsy attempts at translation and interpretation. I tried to read other Steinbeck-novels in original language before and was always disappointed because I couldn't understand a lot of things. German translations are often horrible, and I was unhappy as well. So this was a very good compromise for me. But of course this may be different to people with better knowledge of the language. :-)
I would like to watch the movie one day.

Bei mir