Berliners

by Ludmin Krause

Of Living and Enduring

Berliners tells the story of a troupe of cabaret performers who use laughter, friendship, and loyalty to preserve their humanity and defy the tyranny of the National Socialists. Krause’s modern masterwork is, at its heart, an uproarious and poignant exploration of courage and the nature of existence.

This deluxe edition includes The Notebooks of Montag Deitering, a companion novella chronicling the unsettling inner life of Montag Deitering, a character who will be familiar to readers of The Greater Good.

For readers of Vladimir Nabokov, Albert Camus, and Anthony Doerr, Berliners is a sumptuous feast, a rollicking journey through the minefield of a corrupted world.

371 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 7, 2026

Reviews

[Daniel Shaw · Rating 5 out of 5]

This haunting book, written in the present tense with an elegance that makes every sentence count, is a masterclass of atmospheric prose. Beneath that polished surface, a quiet menace builds, capturing the insidious rise of evil in early 1930s Germany with chilling restraint.

[Richard Drubel · Rating 5 out of 5]

if you liked Babylon Berlin, read this book

Quirky but excellent. Evokes the atmosphere of early Nazi Berlin with an interesting and colorful cast of characters. Read it.

[Ray Valley · Rating 5 out of 5]

A stunning work. This is the third in Krause's cycle and is the most evolved and complete. The dialog is very snappy and the subject matter, the human response to government oppression, seemed very relevant to me. This work is not for everyone. It breaks rules, but (I think) it is a modern classic, especially in comparison to the flattened and unimaginative offerings that make up modern fiction. The novel shows the "tear-away" level of existence that comes to a decayed society (in this case Weimar Germany) but remains hopeful. It is as philosophical as it is vulgar, which appeals to me.