{"title":"Books by Alfred Doblin","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9780141191621","title":"Berlin Alexanderplatz","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe great novel of 1920s Berlin life, in a superb new translation by Michael Hofmann\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eFranz Biberkopf is back on the streets of Berlin. Determined to go straight after a stint in prison, he finds himself thwarted by an unpredictable external agency that looks an awful lot like fate. Cheated, humiliated, thrown from a moving car; embroiled in an underworld of pimps, thugs, drunks and prostitutes, Franz picks himself up over and over again - until one day he is struck a monstrous blow which might just prove his final downfall.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA dazzling collage of newspaper reports, Biblical stories, drinking songs and urban slang, \u003ci\u003eBerlin Alexanderplatz \u003c\/i\u003eis the great novel of Berlin life: inventing, styling and recreating the city as reality and dream; mimicking its movements and rhythms; immortalizing its pubs, abattoirs, apartments and chaotic streets. From the gutter to the stars, this is the whole picture of the city.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eBerlin Alexanderplatz \u003c\/i\u003ebrought fame in 1929 to its author Alfred Döblin, until then an impecunious writer and doctor in a working-class neighbourhood in the east of Berlin. Success at home was short-lived, however; Doblin, a Jew, left Germany the day after the Reichstag Fire in 1933, and did not return until 1945. This landmark translation by Michael Hofmann is the first to do justice to \u003ci\u003eBerlin Alexanderplatz \u003c\/i\u003ein English, brilliantly capturing the energy, prodigality and inventiveness of Döblin's masterpiece.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43201428226226,"sku":"9780141191621","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780141191621_9612b28f-8954-4b6d-ae85-fb571d3ab85b.jpg?v=1786011691"},{"product_id":"9781915530561","title":"Citizens and Soldiers","description":"Towards the end of 1937, having just completed his South American Amazonas trilogy (The Land without Death), Doblin embarked on a new project much closer to home. As a military doctor in Alsace he had experienced firsthand the chaotic scenes in Haguenau and Strasbourg that followed the Kaiser's abdication and the Armistice. His skill at depicting historical events in vivid epic prose would now be applied to seminal events still within living memory, and still highly controversial. He and his family (now with three small children) left Alsace on 14 November 1918 with the hospital staff and patients, reaching Berlin several days later. In March 1919 he witnessed the savage repression of the uprising in Lichtenberg, the eastern Berlin district where he had settled; his sister Meta was killed by grenade shrapnel as she fetched milk for her children. His essay On Cannibalism reveals his anger at both the ineptitude of the insurgents and the callousness of the Social Democrat Minister of War, Noske. Citizens and Soldiers, the self-contained first volume of November 1918: A German Revolution, presents a vivid panorama of fictional and real individuals, scenes and events over a chaotic two weeks. It was published in Amsterdam and Stockholm in October 1939, shortly after Britain and France declared war on Germany. Unsurprisingly it had little chance to circulate. During his exile years in California (1940-45), Doblin completed the remaining parts of what became the longest of his nine epic novels. When in 1947 the question arose of publishing the entire work in Germany, the French Occupation Authority (in which Doblin was serving as Public Education Officer) vetoed Citizens \u0026amp; Soldiers because of sensitivities about the status of Alsace-Lorraine, main location of the novel's action. (This border region had been French territory since the 17th century; was annexed by Germany in 1871 after the Franco-Prussian War, and reverted to France at the end of the First World War. Apart from the war years 1940-45 it has since remained French.) November 1918 A German Revolution therefore appeared as three volumes successively in autumn 1948, spring 1949 and spring 1950. This truncated edition was the basis for an incomplete English translation in the 1980s. In Germany, a complete edition appeared only in 1978, two decades after Doblin's death, enabling for the first time a proper evaluation of what is now seen as one of Doblin's most impressive achievements. It is high time that English readers too should have access to the missing first volume: Citizens \u0026amp; Soldiers.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44582891421874,"sku":"9781915530561","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781915530561_e2600085-8388-4bca-9249-7f44ccf28889.jpg?v=1786030172"},{"product_id":"9781915530578","title":"The Epic Worlds of Alfred Doblin","description":"Of the three great German word-artists of the first half of the 20th century, Alfred Doblin remains the least known. The other two are Thomas Mann, whose attitude towards Doblin ranged from cautious admiration to violent rage; and Berthold Brecht, who learned much from the ideas of his friend Doblin. Anglophone readers have almost no source of information about Doblin, or about the few works already translated into English (Berlin Alexanderplatz perhaps excepted). In Germany, reliable editions of Doblin trickled out between the 1980s (decades after his death in 1957!) and the 2010s. Academic lit. crit. scholars enjoy tackling aspects of his life and output in ways attractive to other scholars. But little has been done to promote Doblin to a wider pool of readers. For the first time, Adventurous Readers provides the inquisitive reader with a map, compass and rations to sustain them as they proceed through the vividly imagined exotic landscapes of his epic novels. Doblin famously declared: 'If a novel can't be cut up into ten pieces like a worm, and each piece lives by itself, it is worthless'. The seventy-two excerpts presented in this book show how he put this maxim into practice. Each deserves close reading, for each brings to life its own vivid world. The excerpts were chosen (from many possible candidates) for their power to entertain, provoke, amuse, cause shudders, and showcase Doblin's mastery of styles, moods, and expressive possibilities. After reading through the selection, or even just dipping in, you should be well prepared to tackle a whole epic novel.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44582891454642,"sku":"9781915530578","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781915530578_4c582b7c-c19e-4c9e-8d68-7093ea80ce92.jpg?v=1786030173"},{"product_id":"9781912916245","title":"Mountains Oceans Giants","description":"The 27th century: beleaguered elites decide to melt the Greenland icecap. Why? - to open up a new continent, for colonisation by the unruly masses. How? - by harvesting the primordial heat of the Earth from Iceland's volcanoes. Nature fights back, and it all goes horribly wrong...","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56309123055989,"sku":"9781912916245","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781912916245_0dc62eb6-2427-463f-8bdf-2f2f1e25276c.jpg?v=1786030171"},{"product_id":"9781912916825","title":"The Land Without Death","description":"Alfred Doblin (1878-1957) composed his epic trilogy of South America under difficult circumstances of exile. It was accessible on first publication in 1937-38 only outside Germany, and for only a couple of years before war broke out. The first postwar edition, like others of Doblin's works apart from Berlin Alexanderplatz, was little noticed in a Germany traumatised by Nazism and defeat. The epic is set mainly in South America, but its true focus is Europe. The urgent guiding proposition is: The Nazis did not emerge from nowhere.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56309123383669,"sku":"9781912916825","price":16.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781912916825_9adbb80c-109b-4632-bfac-830a9a35e0d4.jpg?v=1786030183"},{"product_id":"expect-no-mercy","title":"Expect No Mercy","description":"To an unnamed city in an unnamed country comes an unnamed rural family, left bereft and indebted by the sudden death of the man of the house - a jovial spendthrift. Though unguided by names, we are clearly in Berlin in the years between Germany's unification in 1871 and the economic collapse of 1929-1933, compressed to a one-generation timeline. The city, its industrial class, its hand-to-mouth underbelly, the debt-ridden family itself, emerge with astonishing reality from a vivid narrative moving effortlessly from authorial viewpoint to interior monologue. The central figure is Karl - eldest son, skilled at every rural task and at sea amid the very different urban milieu. To make sure of him as the family breadwinner; his mother beaks his will. Karl climbs from apprentice in his uncle's furniture factory to owner, husband of a trophy wife, father of two accessory children. As social tensions mount, Karl must decide either to continue with his fraud of a life, or attempt to follow the path not taken as a teenager when his mother stopped him from absconding with an anarchist friend. He tries but fails to make contact with rebel forces in open rebellion against the government. He is killed. Tautly composed and written (compared with the expansive epic novels) Expect No Mercy provides incomparable insight into the tragedy of German history in the 19th and 20th centuries.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57510076547445,"sku":"9781917543408","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781917543408.jpg?v=1787130388"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-alfred-doblin.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}