Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin - New York Review Books Classics | Historical Fiction Novel, Weimar Republic Literature | Perfect for Book Clubs & Literature Enthusiasts

I suppose translations are a necessary evil. I can read novels in French Spanish and Italian but realised finally my very basic German would not allow me to read this classic novel in its own language. You are always left wondering... I found the languagse of the translation unlike anything I have read in English, and more readily associated it with exaggerated British sit-coms or carry-on films... Words like "geezer" "bint" "eejit" occur and reoccur as the style becomes increasingly odd, jangly (some would say jazzy), cartoonish, and oblique. You have to trust the Translator, but I found the "translation" the most difficult obstacle to overcome reading Berlin Alexanderplatz, certainly to begin with.Translation aside this is truly an extraordinary novel which will leave no one indifferent. Döblin is compared to Joyce, but I think this is only fair in as much as Ulysses is Dublin, and Berlin Alexanderplatz is Berlin... Joyce is benevolent whereas Doblin's vision is of a gritty seedy lowlife criminal underbelly, where existence itself is captured in all its pitiless savage reality. Perhaps because of the biblical intrusions I was reminded more of Don Passos' Manhattan Transfer, but this novel is uniquely Döblin's, a great torrent of language, ideas, events and accidents, a teeming ferment on every level, which ulrimately indelibly defines the troubled city of the late 1920s. Berlin is perhaps the greatest character here.It is a breathtaking tumult which will grip you and not let you go. The characters are gripping, the portraits of relationships between men and women, between prostitutes and pimps, between thieves and thieves ... It can be tender brutal lyrical and violent in the spur of a moment. The style is a whirlwind, the description of streets and buildings, of shops and tram journeys, there are newspaper reports and advertisements, there are poems and songs, and the stunning biblical interventions... There is a long poignant description of animals led to slaughter. There is an unusual passage where Newtonian formulae are used to show how Ida"s sternum was crushed by Franz. I could go on. The list is endless. The book seems infinite in its resources. It simoly never ceases to absorb and to amaze. It is simply one of a kind.I truly hope to read it someday free of translation.