Occasionally, the ‘Berlin’ section of the bookshop can start to look a little grim. There’s always Isherwood, of course; a couple copies of Stasiland; and then a few big history books about the Nazis to consider buying your father for Christmas. Very rarely does Hauptstadt lit feel like the city that we actually live in and know. But there’s no better person to reinvigorate our literary love for the city than Sharmaine Lovegrove, the multi-hyphenate publisher-agent-Berlinerin-about-town who will soon be bringing her curatorial talents to Chapters Bookshop, opening next month at Wilsnacker Str. 60 in Moabit.
Clear some space on your bedside table for a new stack of books about the weird, wild, wonderful parts of Berlin – and mark your calendars for Chapters’ all-day launch on November 29. Occasionally, the ‘Berlin’ section of the bookshop can start to look a little grim. There’s always Isherwood, of course; a couple copies of Stasiland; and then a few big history books about the Nazis to consider buying your father for Christmas. Very rarely does Hauptstadt lit feel like the city that we actually live in and know. But there’s no better person to reinvigorate our literary love for the city than Sharmaine Lovegrove, the multi-hyphenate publisher-agent-Berlinerin-about-town who will soon be bringing her curatorial talents to Chapters Bookshop, opening next month at Wilsnacker Str. 60 in Moabit. Clear some space on your bedside table for a new stack of books about the weird, wild, wonderful parts of Berlin – and mark your calendars for Chapters’ all-day launch on November 29.
Burning Down the Haus
This book gave me Berlin’s former pulse, the raw energy of East German punk. Mohr shows how young people, armed only with sound and defiance, challenged a system that wanted silence. When I first came here in the early 2000s, I felt some of that spirit flickering in the squats and clubs. Reading it, I realised how much of Berlin’s identity was built on rebellion through culture, and how even when the moment has passed, the spirit of those who fought for freedom still lingers in the city’s air.
- Burning Down the Haus: Punk Rock, Revolution, and the Fall of the Berlin Wall by Tim Mohr is available from Algonquin Books, details.
Perfection
Latronico captures Berlin in the 2010s, full of expats chasing authenticity and reinvention. He writes with precision about the way the city reflects you back at yourself, uncomfortably never letting you escape. And he gets the winters right – long, flat and relentless, stripping away glamour and forcing questions of what home really means. Reading it now, I see how Berlin has shifted again: larger, but also more fragmented, with many competing Berlins each claiming to be the real one. It reminds me this is still a young city, unsettled and always rewriting its story.
- Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico, in English 2025 is available from Fitzcarraldo Editions, details.
The Wall Jumper
My copy of this book is battered because I keep rereading it. Schneider portrays division not as history, but as lived experience: the absurdities, the jokes, the uneasy intimacy of a split city. What strikes me is how people kept finding ways to cross lines, literal and emotional, no matter how solid the Wall seemed. For me, it’s a reminder that Berlin has always been defined by movement across borders, and that its contradictions are part of its essence. Each reading traces the city’s scars, but also its stubborn creativity in the face of them.
- The Wall Jumper by Peter Schneider, in English 1998 is available from Penguin Books, details.
1000 Coils of Fear
This novel feels like Berlin in the present tense: restless, sharp, and full of contradictions. Through a fragmented, playful voice, Wenzel explores race, memory and belonging in ways that pierce and disarm. What makes it vital is how it brings the experience of Blackness into Berlin’s literary imagination, expanding who gets to be seen at the city’s centre. It made me think of Berlin not only as a place of borders and resistance, but as one where identity and history collide in unexpected, urgent ways, shaping the conversations that are happening right now.
- 1000 Coils of Fear by Olivia Wenzel, in English 2022 is available from S. Fischer Verlage, details.
Alone in Berlin
Written in 1946, Fallada shows Berlin at its darkest, following ordinary people who resisted the Nazis despite enormous risks. What I admire is that he doesn’t romanticise courage – it’s fragile and desperate, yet deeply human. Reading it now, I feel the weight of history pressing through the streets: reminders of fear, defiance, and the cost of both. But it isn’t only haunting. It also points to hope, showing how even the smallest acts of resistance carry meaning. In a city where the past is always close, that lesson still feels urgent and alive.
- Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada, in English 2009 is available from Penguin Books, details.
