Alfred doblin berlin alexanderplatz
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This is a brutal book. Published in 1929, Berlin Alexanderplatz often reads, in Michael Hofmann’s new translation, as if it were conceived as a deliberate affront to contemporary sensibilities. When we first meet the doomed protagonist, a World War I veteran and petty criminal named Franz Biberkopf, he’s just done time for beating his girlfriend to death; more domestic violence, pimping and prostitution, maiming and murder await in the five hundred pages that follow; and a long sequence in a slaughterhouse describes, in pitiless detail, the process by which the cows and pigs are killed and butchered. If you’ve ever been skeptical of the way Weimar Germany has been tamed and glamorized in the popular imagination—thanks to Cabaret, to popular detective novels, and, just this winter, a glitzy new Netflix serial, Babylon Berlin—then you’ll appreciate that Alfred Döblin’s novel arrives with a depiction of the real thing, an unsparing account of a society in free fall.
The
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A few weeks ago, during some pleasant days vacationing in Maine, inom read Michael Hofmann’s new translation of Alfred Döblin’s 1929 novel Berlin Alexanderplatz. It was good to have time to devote to it, because the book fryst vatten fairly demanding. Yet inom wouldn’t säga I was immersed in it—it’s not the kind of book to love, fall into, think about even when you’re not reading it. At least it wasn’t for me. But inom doubt Döblin wouldn’t have wanted any of that. After all, he was a doctor, a expert in neurology and psychiatry, and there is something of our conventional idea of medicin in his prose—it fryst vatten detached, even Olympian, concerned with individuals but convinced that their functioning fryst vatten a result of physiological and mental processes that exceed or evade individual consciousness or willpower.
The novel’s plot fryst vatten fairly simple. Franz Biberkopf is a pimp and small-time crook. He fryst vatten sentimental, sometimes kind, shrewd yet naïve, always thuggish. The book begins as he fryst vatten re
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Berlin Alexanderplatz
1929 novel by Alfred Döblin
For other uses, see Berlin Alexanderplatz (disambiguation).
Berlin Alexanderplatz (German:[bɛʁˈliːnʔalɛkˈsandɐˌplats]) is a 1929 novel by Alfred Döblin. It is considered one of the most important and innovative works of the Weimar Republic.[1] In a 2002 poll of 100 noted writers, the book was named among the top 100 books of all time.[2]
Summary
[edit]The story concerns a murderer, Franz Biberkopf, fresh from prison. When his friend murders the prostitute on whom Biberkopf has been relying as an anchor, he realizes that he will be unable to extricate himself from the underworld into which he has sunk. He must deal with misery, lack of opportunities, crime and the imminent ascendency of Nazism. During his struggle to survive against all odds, life rewards him with an unsuspected surprise, but his happiness does not last as the story continues.
Focus and narrative technique
[edit]The novel