Berlin Alexanderplatz

The great novel of 1920s Berlin life, in a superb translation by Michael Hofmann.

‘As long as he had money, he remained decent. But then he ran out of money’

Franz Biberkopf is back on the streets of Berlin. Determined to go straight after a stint in prison for doing some stupid stuff, he finds himself thwarted by an 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 blow which might just prove his downfall.

A dazzling, freewheeling collage of newspaper reports, Biblical stories, drinking songs and urban slang, Berlin Alexanderplatz is the great novel of Berlin life.