‘The Childhood of Ruins’: Pascal Rabaté adapts Kästner

In ‘The Childhood of Ruins’, Pascal Rabaté adapts a novel by Erich Kästner and places the ordinary lives of Berliners on the threshold of the political rupture of 1932.

In Berlin in 1932, Folker Kuntz works in advertising and divides his time between love affairs, friendships and evenings out. In ‘The Childhood of Ruins’, Pascal Rabaté sets this lively everyday world on the brink of political upheaval. The graphic novel adapts ‘Going to the Dogs’, a novel by Erich Kästner: its point of entry is a group of characters caught in an era coming apart, without the story presenting itself as a work of history.

Everyday life in Berlin on the threshold of rupture

The publisher’s description places Folker in a life of ‘frivolities’, surrounded in particular by his neighbour, a cabaret dancer, and his sister, an artist. A newcomer changes this balance: Rudy Ganz, a young man whose life Folker saved and whom he is getting to know. Radio France’s synopsis specifies that Rudy escapes the accident, but not his own difficulties.

This starting point gives the story an intimate scale. The rise of Nazism is not reduced to a succession of political events observed from afar: it runs through the relationships and places frequented by the characters. The question for the reader is then less ‘what will happen?’ than ‘what can those who carry on living as before still see, or want to see?’ This is a line of enquiry opened up by the publisher’s presentation, rather than a conclusion to impose on the book.

Social spaces, tensions taking hold

The publisher’s synopsis takes the characters through discussions at a cabaret, private evenings held by the NSDAP, the Nazi party, and an artist’s studio, culminating in a colonial exhibition. These places are not interchangeable: they sketch out different spaces for encounters and make visible the coexistence of ordinary social life with signs of political rupture or segregation.

Folker’s sister is an artist; her lover has fled racial segregation in the United States. As reported in the description, this detail brings another form of historical violence into the characters’ circle. It broadens the frame without turning the story into an exhaustive panorama of persecution. The title, ‘The Childhood of Ruins’, thus occupies a space between two timeframes: that of a still-lively world, and that of a collapse already taking shape.

These points of reference help situate the book’s premise, but are not enough to assess Rabaté’s artwork, the composition of his pages or the graphic novel’s pacing. The interest documented here lies in the narrative framework and its literary origins: the graphic novel adapts a novel by Kästner; it is not presented as an independent historical investigation.

From Kästner to Rabaté: an adaptation, not a mere summary

Radio France presents ‘Going to the Dogs’ as the text that led Pascal Rabaté to make this adaptation. The move from novel to graphic novel entails a change of form, but the information available does not allow us to describe precisely how the story has been transformed. It is therefore more accurate to focus on the stated undertaking — transposing Kästner’s story into a graphic novel — than to attribute undocumented narrative or artistic choices to Rabaté.

To approach the book, readers can keep this tension in mind: the characters pursue their personal stories while the places they frequent take on political significance. It offers a thread to follow without revealing the ending or reducing the work to a lesson about the rise of Nazism.

Éditions Rue de Sèvres gives the publication date as 23 September 2026. The standard edition has 176 pages; another edition is listed at 192 pages. This difference in pagination is a reason to check which format the bookseller is offering. The publisher lists the price as 27 euros for the standard edition and 30 euros for the other edition. According to the publisher’s page, ‘The Childhood of Ruins’ has also received the RTL Comic Book of the Month Award for October 2026.