
Image by Nigel’s Europe
1. Thomas Brussig, Heroes Like Us
translated by John Brownjohn
The riotous and laugh-aloud novel about Klaus Uhltzscht, the aspiring teenage Nobel laureate of East Berlin, who claims to be the man who breached the Berlin Wall.
‘She lived in Isländische Strasse, a side-street running off Bornholmer Strasse. Yes, that Bornholmer Strasse, the one with the checkpoint at the far end. Milling around in front of it were members of the so-called masses …and confronting them were a few border guards’
2. Tobias Rapp, Lost and Sound. Berlin Techno under der Easyjetset
translated by Katy Derbyshire
The brilliant and vivid portrayal of today’s Berlin clubbing scene – ‘where the reality principle of other cities is suspended in favour of a comprehensive lust principle.’
‘While you’re waiting to be served at the bar a French guy in his early twenties tells you he’s a techno DJ from Montpellier, come to Berlin like the Muslims go on a pilgrimage to Mecca. On the stair case you bump into a huge, half-naked skinhead who tells you that there’s no other club like this, “not even in Russia.” Next to the dancefloor you pick up the thread of a conversation in dub reggae you dropped there a couple of weeks ago.
And then you dance …’
3. Emine Sevgi Özdamar, ‘My Berlin’ in Berlin Tales
translated by Lyn Marven
Berlin’s largest group of residents of non-German origin are Turkish. German Turkish writer Emine Sevgi Ozdamar describes arriving back in the city.
‘At Zoo Station I waved to all the buses going past. I was in freedom and was pleased about the rain … It was as if back then when I had gone back to Istanbul Berlin had frozen like a photo to wait for me – with the long, tall trees, with the Gedachtniskirche, with the double-decker buses, with the corner pubs. Berliner Kindle beer, the crosses on the beer mats. Walls. Checkpoint Charlie. U-Bahn. S-Bahn. Cinema on Steinplatz. Abschied von gestern. Alexander Sluge. Bockwurst sausages. The Brecht theatre Berliner Ensembler. Arturo Ui. Canals. The Peacock Island. Tramps in the stations. Pea soup. Lonely women in Café Kranzler. Black forest gateau …’
4. Ralph Rothmann, Hitze (‘Heat’)
translated by Katy Derbyshire
Berlin winter’s are harsh, especially for the poor Berliners depicted in Rothmann’s powerful story of lives lived on the other side of the track.
‘Cold wind with the scent of brown coal on it drives sleet across the asphalt and generates a rustling in the trees, old oaks, giant horse chestnuts, the hollows and holes filled up with concrete. Where a street lamp stretches in the branches, the leaves have stayed hanging on and are still green here and there.’
5. Tobias Rüther, Helden, David Bowie und Berlin (‘Heroes, David Bowie and Berlin’)
translated by Katy Derbyshire
David Bowie’s Berlin period was legendary for its creativity and here Ruther reconstructs what his life was like during these years.
‘And how he threw himself upon Berlin and surrendered himself to the place! … He spent hours walking by the Wannsee lake, cycling, visiting Nazi sites and having his photo taken there. He crossed over to East Berlin over and again at Checkpoint Charlie to visit the Berlin Ensembler, Brecht’s old theatre. Around the corner from there, he ate on Schiffbauerdamm with Iggy Popp and Tony Visconti …’
6. Vladimir Kaminer, Russian Disco
translated by Michael Hulse
In Kaminer’s pulsating novel he shows us that life for Berlin’s students isn’t always about sitting around discussing philosophy.
‘My friend Sasha from the Ukraine, who has been reading Slavic studies at Humboldt University for two years, had a choice between dish-washing in an Australian crocodile steakhouse, cleaning the lavatories in the Beate Uhse Museum of Erotica, or helping with liposuction treatment at a beauty clinic. Though he is himself a vegetarian, Sasha opted for the crocodile restaurant and was revolted from morning till night.’
7. Anna Winger, This Must Be The Place
In the first novel of American Berlin resident Anna Winger, Hope newly arrived in the city, aims to get to know it through daily tours using the underground.
‘As the U-Bahn pulled up above ground, Hope blinked into the daylight thinking that it was possible to see every layer of the city’s history at once in every direction … In the other European cities, the past was glorified, the architecture spruced up for tourists to the point of caricature. But here, nobody seemed to be in a hurry one way of the other. Buildings had been bombed and the city had been ripped apart, but years later holes remained all over the place without explanation or apparent concern. The city moved forward with a lack of vanity that she found relaxing …’
8. Inka Parei, Die Schattenboxerin (‘The Shadow Boxer’)
translated by Katy Derbyshire
In the 1990s whole swathes of East Berlin were in a state of decay, memorably evoked in Inka Parei’s novel of survival in difficult times.
‘Two gay variety artistes live on the third floor with a four-metre-long brown and white spotted boa constrictor … I hear them arguing long and often over the great deal of housework their zoo requires. At night I see the glowing openings in their small stove, which has to be fed around the clock. They also keep tarantulas, a parrot and a docile-muzzled black mastiff. The dog follows them like a calf-shaped shadow when they carry their snake basket down the stairs towards the Friedrichstadtpalast on Mondays and Thursdays.’
9. Rayk Wieland, Ich schlage vor, dass uns kissen (‘I suggest we kiss’)
translated by Katy Derbyshire
In Rayk Wieland’s memorable novel the young narrator is summoned to one of the most feared places in communist East Berlin – the Stasi headquarters.
‘In Magdalenenstrasse, the Stasi headquarters, there were above all doors: doors before doors and doors behind doors, doors around doors, for the sole reason that no one was ever to see anyone or, as it was called in secret service jargon, declassify anyone. The corridors here were virtually sprinkled with doors and double-doors every few yards. No other building in the world had as many doors. It may have been the Stasi’s exorbitant demand for doors that brought the GDR to its knees.’
10.Yade Kara, Selam Berlin (‘Salaam Berlin’)
translated by Katy Derbyshire
When Hasan, a young Turkish-German, hears the Berlin Wall has fallen he heads straight back home from Istanbul. He starts to discover the East – at the now world-famous Tacheles bar.
‘East Berlin was like a whole different era. Dark streets, bullet-ridden facades, cobblestones; rusty signs reading ‘Lehmann’s Laundry’ or ‘Potato Erna’ hung on blackened buildings. It was as if time had stood still here. It was a bit like post-war Germany, like in the black-and-white films from the weekly news.’
Excerpts from all the books featured here are available in Oxygen Books’ city-pick Berlin (£8.99) Other titles in the series include Amsterdam, Paris, London, Venice and Dublin with New York out this autumn. www.oxygenbooks.co.uk
www.spottedbylocals.com/berlin/