Berlin Alexanderplatz

Author(s): Alfred Döblin

Novel | Translated fiction | Germany

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.

Alfred Doblin, one of the great figures of German modernism, was born in 1878 to a Jewish family. He moved to Berlin at the age of ten, where he remained for the next 45 years. Doblin's 1929 masterpiece Berlin Alexanderplatz made him famous, but he was forced to flee to France and then Los Angeles during the years of the Nazi dictatorship. He died in 1957. Michael Hofmann is a poet and translator from the German. For Penguin he has translated four books by Hans Fallada, in addition to works by Franz Kafka, Ernst Junger, Irmgard Keun and Jakob Wassermann.


Product Information

General Fields

  • : 9780141191621
  • : Penguin Random House
  • : Penguin Books Ltd
  • : 0.348
  • : June 2019
  • : ---length:- '19.8'width:- '12.9'units:- Centimeters
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Alfred Döblin
  • : Paperback
  • : English
  • : 833.912
  • : 466
  • : FC
  • : Michael Hofmann