Emil and the Detectives

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Emil and the Detectives (German: Emil und die Detektive) is a 1929 novel set mainly in Berlin, by the German writer Erich Kästner and illustrated by Walter Trier. It was Kästner's first major success and the only one of his pre-1945 works to escape Nazi censorship. The book was immediately popular and the original version sold an initial two million copies. First published in English in 1930, it has never been out of print and has been translated into at least 59 languages. It is Kästner's best-known work. Compared with children's literature of the time, its most unusual aspect was its realistic setting in a contemporary Berlin peopled with some fairly rough characters rather than a sanitized fantasy world; also that it refrained from obvious moralizing, letting the characters' deeds speak for themselves. Emil was the first name of Kästner's father.

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