Berlin Alexanderplatz
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4.7 • 3 Ratings
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- $20.99
Publisher Description
The inspiration for Rainer Werner Fassbinder's epic film and that The Guardian named one of the "Top 100 Books of All Time," Berlin Alexanderplatz is considered one of the most important works of the Weimar Republic and twentieth century literature.
Berlin Alexanderplatz, the great novel of Berlin and the doomed Weimar Republic, is one of the great books of the twentieth century, gruesome, farcical, and appalling, word drunk, pitchdark. In Michael Hofmann's extraordinary new translation, Alfred Döblin's masterpiece lives in English for the first time.
As Döblin writes in the opening pages:
The subject of this book is the life of the former cement worker and haulier Franz Biberkopf in Berlin. As our
story begins, he has just been released from prison, where he did time for some stupid stuff; now he is back
in Berlin, determined to go straight.
To begin with, he succeeds. But then, though doing all right for himself financially, he gets involved in a
set-to with an unpredictable external agency that looks an awful lot like fate.
Three times the force attacks him and disrupts his scheme. The first time it comes at him with dishonesty and deception. Our man is able to get to his feet, he is still good to stand.
Then it strikes him a low blow. He has trouble getting up from that, he is almost counted out. And finally it hits him with monstrous and extreme violence.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this translation of a harrowing and sprawling novel of 1920s Germany, the shifting fortunes of a man newly released from prison counterpoint the societal changes of the Weimar Republic. D blin's (1878 1957) first published the novel in 1929; it showcases the bitter underside of a society wracked by the aftermath of war and on its way toward totalitarianism. The story opens with protagonist Franz Bieberkopf being released from prison and heading to Berlin in hopes of finding a job. He ends up drifting between legal and illegal work, which bears a terrible toll on his body and sets in motion a series of tragic events. Periodically, Franz's story pauses so that other characters can recount stories of their own, which sometimes echo and sometimes contrast with Franz's circumstances. Hoffman's translation moves seamlessly from the personal to the societal and back again, using Anglicisms ("Not if what I want's the silk coat, innit?") that are sometimes jarring. A constant throughout the novel is a sense of political unrest: characters heatedly debate Marxism even as nationalism and anti-Semitism are rarely out of view, hauntingly anticipating the rise of Nazism. This is a damning portrait of violence both personal and societal, with a sense of something terrible on the horizon.
