I'm going on holiday to Berlin in a few weeks and I would like to read a Berlin-set novel when I'm there.
My taste generally skews towards literary fiction but I also enjoy science fiction, speculative fiction, and horror.
Thanks in advance for suggestions!
by PsychologyOk5757
25 Comments
So much spy fiction. Len Deighton- Harry Palmer and Bernard Samson books. Hoping for suggestions after the Wall came down! I love Berlin and the way you can tell East from west still.
I just found this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/suggestmeabook/s/KpDKMfnUs4
Fatherland is an alternate-history murder-mystery novel by Robert Harris.
Berlin Blues- [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3751634](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3751634)
Alone in Berlin- [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6801335-alone-in-berlin?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_15](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6801335-alone-in-berlin?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_15)
The Girl Behind the Wall- [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55809692-the-girl-behind-the-wall?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=2rPexeiH3O&rank=1](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55809692-the-girl-behind-the-wall?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=2rPexeiH3O&rank=1)
Berlin rules, so many good restaurants, check out 1990 vegan living, and Michelberger Hotel.
And watch the movie Goodbye Lenin if you haven’t.
for modern berlin, the Italian novelist Latronico lives there and has written a few books about it Perfection and La Chiave di Berlino.
For Weimar-era Berlin you can’t beat Doblin. Berlin Alexanderplatz and the multi-volume historical novel November 1918
Obviously Goodbye to Berlin by Isherwood is the basis for Cabaret and very good.
A masterpiece of the Nazizeit is Everyman dies Alone by Hans Fallada about one couple’s resistance to the Nazis.
Short End of the Sonnenallee – Thomas Brussig
I recently read I Make Envy on Your Disco by Eric Schnall. It’s charming and bittersweet— the flavour of various neighbourhoods comes through strongly, and it grapples with Berlin’s complex history in a sensitive way without wallowing in it.
Ian McEwan, *The Innocent*
‘Funeral In Berlin’ by Len Deighton
Two spring to mind that have large portions of the novel set in Berlin.
Lessons by Ian McEwan and The End of Loneliness by Benedict Wells
The Bernie Gunther books are mostly set in Berlin around WW2 and later.
Madonna in a Fur Coat is mainly set in berlin
Goodbye to Berlin
Alone in Berlin
Iron Gustav
All amazing reads!
Other People’s Clothes by Calla Henkel! A super fun, easy, gripping read
Berlin Syndrome by Melanie Joosten. I also agree with Alone in Berlin.
Berlin – Bea Setton
Other People’s Clothes – Calla Henkel
Tomorrow Berlin – Oscar Coop Phane
The Instant – Amy Liptrot
Rave – Rainald Goetz
Perfection – Vincenzo Latronico
It’s a bit dated, but The New Sorrows of Young W. by Ulrich Plenzdorf might be interesting.
Forty Autumns: A Family’s Story of Courage and Survival on Both Sides of the Berlin Wall by Nina Willner
Not going to help for a short vacay to Germany, but if you want a fun (and long) military sci-fi series with one book that takes place primarily in Berlin, check out John Ringo’s The Legacy of Aldenata (also called the Polseen Wars Series on Amazon (and The Invasion series in the Germany Amazon page).
It has 12 books in the main series with Book 7 titled *Die Wacht am Rhein.* (Watch on the Rhein) If you read German there is a partial German translation in print edition, though it has only been completed through book 4 iirc
**Band 1: Der Aufmarsch** (A Hymn Before Battle, 2000)
**Band 2: Der Angriff** (Gust Front, 2001)
**Band 3: Der Gegenschlag** (When the Devil Dances, 2002)
**Band 4: Die Rettung** (Hell’s Faire, 2003)
(It gets sketchy to find after book 4 for print versions in German.)
**Band 5: Heldentaten** (Side stories/anthologies)
**Band 6: Callys Krieg** (Cally’s War, with Julie Cochrane)
**Band 7: Die Verräter** (Watch on the Rhine, with Tom Kratman)
**Band 8: Die Rückkehr** (Yellow Eyes, with Tom Kratman
Berlin Alexanderplatz, by Alfred Doblin is great. One of the better somewhat recent novels I’ve read is Kairos, by Jenny Erpenbeck, set in East Berlin around the time the wall came down.
Alone in Berlin – Hans Falada
Kairos
an honest man by Ben Ferguson
Philip Kerr, Bernie Gunther series, Berlin Stories, Isherwood
Christopher Isherwood’s The Berlin Stories