Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
of the intricacies and ever-changing identity of the city.
Ì
Heather Reyes, Katy Derbyshire (eds)
City Lit
Series Berlin.
Superb anthology that provides an intellectual
tour of Berlin in some hundred pieces written by various
historians, journalists and writers; among them Christopher
Isherwood, Ian McEwan and David Bowie. Great for a quick
sense of the city's historical context, its ongoing cultural
and architectural evolution and its countercultural vibe.
Uwe Seidel
Berlin & Potsdam.
Illustrated guide to the city,
with much detail on places that you can't see anymore.
Useful if you're after knowledge of the what-stood-where
kind.
Ian Walker
Zoo Station.
A personal recollection of time
spent in Berlin in the mid-1980s. Perceptive, engaging and
well informed, it's the most enjoyable account of pre-
Wende
life in the city.
FICTION
Len Deighton
Winter: A Berlin Family 1899-1945.
Fictional saga tracing the fortunes of a Berlin family
through World War I, the rise of Nazism and the collapse of
the Third Reich: a convincing account of how a typical
upper-middle-class family fared. Better known is
Funeral in
Berlin
Ì
Christopher Isherwood
Goodbye to Berlin.
Set in
the decadent atmosphere of the Weimar Republic as the
Nazis steadily gain power, this collection of stories
brilliantly evokes the period and brings to life some classic
Berlin characters. It subsequently formed the basis of the
films
, a spy-thriller set in the middle of Cold War Berlin and
based around the defection of an Eastern chemist, aided by
hard-bitten agent Harry Palmer (as the character came to
be known in the film starring Michael Caine).
Berlin Game
pits British SIS agent Bernard Samson (whose father
appears in
Winter
) against an arch manipulator of the East
Berlin secret service, and leaves you hanging for the
sequels
Mexico Set
and
London Match
.
Alfred Döblin
Berlin-Alexanderplatz.
A prominent
socialist intellectual during the Weimar period, Döblin
went into exile shortly after the banning (and burning) of
his books in 1933. This is his weightiest and most durable
achievement, an unrelenting stream-of-consciousness epic
of the city's proletariat.
Theodor Fontane
E
Briest.
This story of a woman's
adultery in the second half of the nineteenth century offers a
vivid picture of Prussian mores, with the sort of terrible and
absurd climax that's virtually unique to Fontane and to German
literature. One of the few classics to come out of Berlin.
Hugo Hamilton
Surrogate City
is a love story between an
Irish woman and a Berliner and strongly evocative of pre-
Wende
Berlin.
The Love Test
, the tale of a journalist
researching the history of a woman's involvement with the
Stasi, gives a realistic account of 1990s Berlin.
Robert Harris
Fatherland
. A Cold War novel with a
difference: Germany has conquered Europe and the Soviet
Union, and the Cold War is being fought between the Third
Reich and the USA. Against this background, Berlin
detective Xavier March is drawn into an intrigue involving
murder and Nazi o
cials. All this owes much to Philip Kerr
(see below) but Harris's picture of Nazi Berlin in 1964 is
chillingly believable.
Lillian Hellman
Pentimento.
The first volume of Hellman's
memoirs contains “Julia”, supposedly (it was later accused
of being heavily fictionalized) the story of one of her
friends caught up in the Berlin resistance. This was later
made into a finely acted, if rather thinly emotional, film of
the same name.
. See also
Isherwood's
Mr Norris Changes Trains
, the adventures of the
eponymous overweight hero in pre-Hitler Berlin and
Germany.
Ì
Wladimir Kaminer
Russian Disco, Tales of Everyday
Lunacy on the Streets of Berlin.
Collection of stories that are
snapshots of Berlin through the eyes of a Russian
immigrant from Moscow. Unusual, entertaining and well
written: Kaminer has since become a local celebrity, DJing
Russendisko
nights at
Kaffee Burger
(see p.208).
Philip Kerr
Berlin Noir: March Violets
,
The Pale Criminal
and
A German Requiem.
Three great novels on Berlin in one
omnibus edition. The first is a well-received detective
thriller set in the early years of Nazi Berlin. Keen on period
detail - nightclubs, the Olympic Stadium, building sites for
the new autobahn - and with a terrific sense of
atmosphere, the topic rips along to a gripping denouement.
Bernie Gunther, its detective hero, also features in the
second title - a wartime Berlin crime novel. But the best,
I Am a Camera
and the later remake
Cabaret
A
German Requiem
, has Gunther travelling from ravaged
postwar Berlin to run into ex-Nazis in Vienna.
Ian McEwan
The Innocent.
McEwan's novel brilliantly
evokes 1950s Berlin as seen through the eyes of a post
o
ce worker caught up in early Cold War espionage - and
his first sexual encounters. Flounders in its obligatory
McEwan nasty final twist, but laden with a superbly
researched atmosphere.
Ulrich Plenzdorf
The New Sufferings of Young W.
A
satirical reworking of Goethe's
Die Leiden des jungen
Werthers
set in 1970s East Berlin. It tells the story of Edgar
Wibeau, a young rebel without a cause adrift in the
antiseptic GDR, and when first published it pushed the
borders of literary acceptability under the old regime with
its portrayal of alienated, disaffected youth.
Holly-Jane Rahlens
Becky Bernstein Goes Berlin.
A young
Jewish girl from Queens falls in love with a German,
emigrates to Berlin and discovers a new love for the city. A
bouncy and funny novel full of New York wit.
