Berlin Alexanderplatz: The Story of Franz Biberkopf - Softcover

Doblin, Arnold

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140045023 ISBN 13: 9780140045024

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 1978

Synopsis

Translation by Anne Thompson of Alfred Döblin’s masterpiece set in 1920’s Berlin towards the end of the jazz and music-hall era of the Roaring Twenties. Franz Biberkopf is released after four years in prison for killing his girl-friend in a fit of rage. He makes a vow that he will go straight and lead a decent life, but his corrupt environment makes it impossible and despite all his efforts he is plunged step by step into the louche underworld of gangsters, prostitutes and pimps. Anne Thompson’s translation captures the atmosphere of cosmopolitan Berlin towards the end of the Weimar Republic, and of the life of Berliners in the streets of the working-class area of Berlin around the Alexanderplatz square.

About this title

From the Author

Alfred Döblin (1878-1957) studied medicine in Berlin and specialized in the treatment of nervous diseases. Along with his experiences as a psychiatrist in the workers' quarter of Berlin, his writing was inspired by the work of Holderlin, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche and was first published in the literary magazine Der Sturm. Associated with the Expressionist literary movement in Germany, he is now recognized as on of the most important modern European novelists.

From the Back Cover

Berlin in the 1920s. Franz Biberkopf has just been released from prison after serving four years for violence that resulted in the death of a girlfriend. He returns to his old neighborhood--Alexanderplatz--vowing to live a decent life. What he finds are unemployment lines, gangsters, prostitutes, petty thieves, and neophyte Nazis. In this sordid world there are new women--devoted Eva, vulnerable young Mieze--and the dangerous, near psychotic Reinhold, who befriends him. As Franz struggles to survive, fate teases him with a little luck, a little pleasure, then cruelly turns on him.

Berlin Alexanderplatz is one of the masterpieces of European literature. The first German novel to adopt the technique of James Joyce, it excited and overwhelmed critics and readers everywhere as it was translated into other languages. One of its greatest admirers was a brilliant young German director. Rainer Fassbinder saw in the novel "a huge part of myself . . . decisive into determining the course of my life." One of Fassbinder's last projects was an impressive fifteen-hour film version of Berlin Alexanderplatz. Some of the stills from that epic adaptation -- remarkably faithful to the Doblin novel -- are included here.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 1978
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0140045023
• ISBN 13: 9780140045024
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 480