Döblin Berlin Alexanderplatz

About Berlin Alexanderplatz

Alfred Döblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929) is the greatest German novel of the twentieth century and the supreme achievement of German modernism — a work that does for Berlin what Ulysses does for Dublin. Franz Biberkopf, newly released from prison, tries to go straight in the chaos of late-Weimar Berlin, where the Depression approaches and the Nazi party rises; Döblin renders his experience through a torrent of newspaper headlines, street songs, advertisements, biblical passages, and overlapping voices that create the full noise of the modern city as consciousness. The novel influenced Brecht, Walter Benjamin, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who adapted it into a legendary fourteen-part film in 1980. Michael Hofmann's 2018 translation (New York Review Books) is the definitive English version.