Berlin: Tales of the City

by John Miller (Editor), Tim Smith (Editor)

Berlin is one of the most intriguing cities in Europe.

Despite its tumultuous history, it has remained the heart of Germany, even when the heart was divided in four.

In one pocket-sized volume, Berlin collects the best fiction and nonfiction about the city from an array of writers of international stature. From chanteuse Josephine Baker on her second adopted home to playwright Bertolt Brecht on the decline of the Weimar Republic, and including an excerpt from Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, a resident's 1989 account of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and a description of Berlin from the 1912 edition of a Baedeker guide (written by Karl Baedeker himself), Berlin is an engaging literary stroll through a remarkable city.

contents
Preface / Vladimir Nabokov --
The job / Bertolt Brecht --
The Berlin diaries / Marie Vassiltchikov --
Berlin Alexanderplatz / Alfred Doblin --
Gravity's rainbow / Thomas Pynchon --
Picture postcard, Berlin / Franz Kafka --
The lavender lay / Marcellus Schiffer --
The party at the wall / Bennett Owen --
Julia / Lillian Hellman --
Berlin's general aspect / Karl Baedeker --
A Berlin diary / Christopher Isherwood --
From Berlin to the Folies-Bergere / Josephine Baker --
Berlin letter / Rainer Maria Rilke --
Ritter Gluck / E. T. A. Hoffmann --
The quest for Christa T. / Christa Wolf.

224 pages, Hardcover

First published April 18, 1996

About the author

John Miller has edited a number of intriguing anthologies for Chronicle Books, including Lust and White Rabbit. He runs Big Fish Books, a packaging company in San Francisco.