‘Literature’ Archives
City Lit: Ten Berlin Books
Berlin has been the inspiration and provided the setting for many novels. Berlin based writer Madhvi Ramani rounds up ten of her favourites... 10. Book of Clouds by Chloe Aridjis “Ever since arriving in Berlin I’d become a professional in lost time. It was impossible to account for all the hours. The hands on clocks and watches jumped ahead or lagged behind indiscriminately. The city ran its own chronometric scale.” Tatiana is a Mexican in Berlin who flits from one job to [...]
The Virtues Of Writing Slowly
In an age of unreflecting haste, there are many good reasons for authors to take their own sweet time, says Andrew Gallix... I recently expressed concern at the accelerating pace of publishing and called (half-jokingly) for the creation of a Slow Writing Movement (SWM), modelled on the Slow Food phenomenon. Word processing probably enables people to write faster than ever, and the internet provides the sometimes dubious means of instant publication. As a result, what often passes for [...]
Cafe Hilde
Book readings, hearty Irish breakfasts and home-made cakes... My first encounter with Café Hilde was on a dark and wet winter night back in January. The streets outside glistened with snow and rain rapped at the windows like a lunatic insect as I sipped wine with friends and listened in hushed silence to a voice from the past. The voice belonged to Orson Welles – to a 1938 radio broadcast of him reading from Joseph Conrad’s Heart Of Darkness to be precise. Welles' voice, wrapped [...]
City Lit: Kurfürstendamm
Suzi from Packabook.com throws away her guidebook to explore one of Berlin's most famous streets via two novels... One of the great joys of reading books set in the city you're visiting is the way they can help you understand your surroundings. I like to read novels as if they're maps - keys to places I've not yet unlocked. Some people like guide books...I'd rather read a novel. I think I'm right in saying that for most non-German speakers, the street names in Berlin can be a bit [...]
The Berlin Stories
Little less than a century old, Christopher Isherwood’s classic book still sheds light on the city that’s its star… Aficionados of Slow Travel know that to get to the soul of a place you don’t necessarily have to explore its heart. Tourists gathering around London’s Trafalgar Square or Rome’s Trevi Fountain may feel that they have come face to face with a city’s history, but these are landmarks, nothing more, ignored by locals to whom they represent little. The soul of a [...]
Marga Schoeller Bookshop
A charming Charlottenburg bookshop with a great selection of English titles and a warm, old school vibe... Not many bookstores can say they've been in operation for over eight decades, especially in a city as historically turbulent as Berlin - but Marga Schoeller's can. Opened in 1929 by the eponymous Frau Schoeller, the shop originally specialised in European literature and theatre works. Schoeller managed to stay open during the National Socialist years despite refusing to sell Nazi [...]
Escape From Berlin by Catherine Klein
A tense and personal portrait of a Berlin torn apart by war… As anyone who has ever visited or lived in Berlin knows, it’s impossible not to stumble across the Second World War at some point. Its ghostly aura seeps through the city like an invisible fog, filling empty concrete bunkers, haunting memorials, cleaving to certain architecture. It’s especially apparent in the spaces where the places used to be. While we tend to be well acquainted with the facts of the war (the dates, the [...]
