Alfred Doblin - Berlin Alexanderplast (2nd Hand Paperback)
ISBN / GTIN-13 : 9780141191621
Synopsis
The great novel of 1920s Berlin life, in a superb new translation by Michael Hofmann.
Franz Biberkopf is back on the streets of Berlin. Determined to go straight after a stint in prison, he finds himself thwarted by an unpredictable external agency that looks an awful lot like fate. Cheated, humiliated, thrown from a moving car; embroiled in an underworld of pimps, thugs, drunks and prostitutes, Franz picks himself up over and over again - until one day he is struck a monstrous blow which might just prove his final downfall.
A dazzling collage of newspaper reports, Biblical stories, drinking songs and urban slang, Berlin Alexanderplatz is the great novel of Berlin life: inventing, styling and recreating the city as reality and dream; mimicking its movements and rhythms; immortalising its pubs, abattoirs, apartments and chaotic streets.
From the gutter to the stars, this is the whole picture of the city.
Berlin Alexanderplatz brought fame in 1929 to its author Alfred Döblin, until then an impecunious writer and doctor in a working-class neighbourhood in the east of Berlin. Success at home was short-lived, however; Doblin, a Jew, left Germany the day after the Reichstag Fire in 1933, and did not return until 1945.
This landmark translation by Michael Hofmann is the first to do justice to Berlin Alexanderplatz in English, brilliantly capturing the energy, prodigality and inventiveness of Döblin's masterpiece.
Details
- Format : Thicker 2nd Hand Paperback
- Condition : Very Good
- Category : Fiction - Classics
- Published : 1929 (This Edition 2018 - Penguin Classics)
- ISBN : 9780141191621
- SKU : B001225
- PPC : SP400gm
- RRP : £9.99
- Quantity Available : 1 only.
External Reviews
"The book is is interspersed with newspaper headlines, song lyrics, little vignettes, imitation of sounds, description of street scenes, religious references, parts of dialogue - the whole thing comes together as a major symphony of atmospheric writing, evoking the roaring twenties in all their gruesome glory. Franz' voice is rendered in raw, rambling Berlin dialect, which underlines his limited ability to truly dissect and analyse what he does and why, and what's happening around him. Such complex novels can easily become exercises that mainly appeal on a theoretical level, but offer no pleasure when reading them. Döblin's text is different: This is extremely fun to read, not only for the story, but for the whole overwhelming experience. Great, great stuff." - Goodreads Review.
"This new English translation by Michael Hofmann - the first in more than 75 years - expertly captures the fecundity, originality and musicality of Döblin's masterpiece . . . A bold and dazzling collage of a novel." - The National.
"Brutal and prophetic . . . a turning point in the history of the German novel." - The Times.
" . . . a street-smart, slang-filled, richly allusive tale of crime, punishment and social crisis in the capital of Weimar Germany just before Hitler's rise to power. Hofmann's firecracker prose fizzes through this revolutionary trip into the lower depths of big-city life." - Boyd Tonkin.
The Author
Bruno Alfred Döblin was a German novelist, essayist, and doctor, best known for his novel Berlin Alexanderplatz. A prolific writer whose œuvre spans more than half a century and a wide variety of literary movements and styles, Döblin is one of the most important figures of German literary modernism.Delivery & Postage
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