A prophetic, darkly comic lost classic about down-and-outs in a fractured Berlin by the author of the Sunday Times bestselling rediscovery The Passenger
‘A writer of great insight and talent’ FT
Berlin, 1920s: a beacon of culture and hedonism, but a political mess. The streets are crowded with war veterans, beggars, prostitutes and madmen, desperately chasing any means to secure a few marks or a roof over their heads. Come nighttime, a rag-tag group descends on the Jolly Huntsman pub to dance and drown their cares in all the schnapps they can afford. But in this society on the brink, pleasure all too easily erupts into violence.
A bleakly comic story of struggle and discontent on the fringes of the metropolis, Berlin Shuffle is a blistering portrait of a divided society that would give way to fascism. Written when he was just twenty-two years old, Boschwitz’s first novel displays his extraordinary talent for capturing Germany’s self-destruction, which would tragically engulf him only five years later.
Reviews
Highlights the author’s exceptional talent for capturing the human experience of the political and economic disarray felt in Germany during the interwar years… The tension is ratcheted up brilliantly… A cautionary tale for our times
FT
A cynical, funny account of down-and-out Berlin in the 1920s… lively… with a fittingly explosive conclusion
Guardian
A story of misery, mayhem, madness and murder… The parallels with the present are frequently surprising… Presents a darkly funny anthropological study of what it is like to be one of the ordinary, little people trapped in an escalating social nightmare
Sunday Times
