I've just finished Alfred Döblin's "Berlin Alexanderplatz". In spite of its reputation as a difficult book, it gripped me, and I can quite see why it sold well when it was first published in 1929. I was reminded of John Dos Passos' "Manhattan Transfer" and "USA' trilogy. Read it if you have any interest in modernism, modernity, cities, Berlin, crime, Weimar Germany, the world between the wars...don't read it if you can't deal with stomach churning scenes of violence against women.

My German is not and never will be anywhere good enough to deal with the original text, so I turned to the 1931 translation by Eugene Jolas. This version has been much criticised for its rendering of Berlin working class speech into the colloquial American English of the twenties, but that choice struck the right note with me. The Berlin of the twenties does seem to me much more like Chicago or New York than Paris or London - a city without centuries of history but bursting with the sounds of streetcars, boxing commentators, ads, wisecracks...the sounds of modernity. US English does seem to be the English of the twentieth century city.

I looked at the more recent and widely praised Michael Hofmann translation, which employs a vaguely cockney sounding English - perhaps I am being unfair, because I only read brief extracts, but I found myself thinking of Dick Van Dyke in "Mary Poppins"!

Although the novels that Döblin wrote before "Berlin Alexanderplatz" don't sound like my cup of tea, I would be interested to read his tetralogy "November 1918: A German Revolution". Is a good translation of those books available?

Image: Mario von Bucovich -- Berlin --Kaufhaus Tietz -- Alexanderplatz -- 1928 -- Wikimedia Commons - Public Domain

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