Emil and the Detectives (German: Emil und die Detektive) is a 1929 novel set mainly in Berlin,[1] 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.[2] First published in English in 1931,[3] it has never been out of print and has been translated into at least 59 languages.[2][4]
It is Kästner's best-known work. Compared with similar literature at the time, its most unusual aspect was its realistic setting in a contemporary Berlin peopled with some fairly rough characters, not in 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.