Berlin Shuffle

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.



Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz was born in Berlin in 1915. He left Germany in 1935 for Oslo, Norway, studied at the Sorbonne in Paris, and wrote two novels, including The Passenger. Boschwitz eventually settled in England in 1939, although he was interned as a German "enemy alien" after war broke out-despite his Jewish background-and subsequently shipped to Australia. In 1942, Boschwitz was allowed to return to England, but his ship was torpedoed by a German submarine and he was killed along with all 362 passengers. He was twenty-seven years old. Philip Boehm has translated over thirty novels and plays by German and Polish writers, including Herta Müller, Franz Kafka and Hanna Krall.