On this page I have compiled a list of recommended Berlin Books – books about Berlin and/or stories set in Berlin. All books listed are linked to their respective page at amazon.com where you can find additional information about the book and the author. Of course you could also purchase the book through that link in which case I would earn a small commission which would help me to pay for server costs etc.
Please feel free to add your own recommendations – I’m always keen on hearing of other Berlin Books I haven’t heard of. Thank you!
Berlin im 19. Jahrhundert – Photographs from the 19th century
 | A coffee table book full of Berlin photos of the 19th century: Berlin im 19. Jahrhundert see also: |
Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall
 | “Anna Funder delivers a prize-winning and powerfully rendered account of the resistance against East Germany’s communist dictatorship in these harrowing, personal tales of life behind the Iron Curtain—and, especially, of life under the iron fist of the Stasi…” Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall by Anna Funder |
Arwed Messmer: Reenactment MfS
 | “In the archives of East Germany’s Stasi secret police, there are countless photographs of failed escape attempts across the Berlin Wall. Here, German artist Arwed Messmer (born 1964) presents a complex collage of found, retouched and recontextualized visual records and Messmer’s own photographs.…” Arwed Messmer: Reenactment MfS by by Arwed Messmer (Photographer) |
Alfred Döblin: Berlin Alexanderplatz
 | Probably one of the most popular Berlin books – at least if you ask me… The legendary book of Alfred Döblin about the life of Franz Biberkopf in 1930ies Berlin: Berlin Alexanderplatz: The Story of Franz Biberkopf (at amazon.com) |
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
 | “A new hardcover edition of the book Graham Greene called the best spy story I have ever read.” The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John Le Carré |
Demian: The Story of Emil Sinclair’s Youth (Penguin Classics)
 | “A powerful new translation of Nobel Prize winner Hermann Hesse’s masterpiece of youthful rebellion” Demian by Hermann Hesse |
Fatherland
 | “Fatherland is set in an alternative world where Hitler has won the Second World War. It is April 1964 and one week before Hitler’s 75th birthday…” Fatherland by Robert Harris |
The Innocent: A Novel
 | Another spy story from Cold War Berlin times: “Leonard Marnham is assigned to a British-American surveillance team in Cold War Berlin. His intelligence work — tunneling under a Russian communications center to tap the phone lines to Moscow…” The Innocent: A Novel by Ian McEwan |
Alone in Berlin (Penguin Modern Classics)
 | “Berlin, 1940, and the city is filled with fear. At the house on 55 Jablonski Strasse, its various occupants try to live under Nazi rule in their different ways…” Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada |
Berlin Noir: March Violets; The Pale Criminal; A German Requiem
 | “Ex-policeman Bernie Gunther thought he’d seen everything on the streets of 1930s Berlin. But then he went freelance, and each case he tackled sucked him further into the grisly excesses of Nazi subculture…” Berlin Noir: March Violets; The Pale Criminal; A German Requiem – three Berlin stories by Philip Kerr |
Garden of Beasts: A Novel of Berlin 1936
 | “Paul Schumann, a German American living in New York City in 1936, is a mobster hitman known as much for his brilliant tactics as for taking only “righteous” assignments. But then Paul gets caught. And the arresting officer offers him a stark choice…” Garden of Beasts: A Novel of Berlin 1936 by Jeffery Deaver |
The Good German
 | “The bestselling author of Los Alamos returns to 1945. Hitler has been defeated, and Berlin is divided into zones of occupation. Jake Geismar, an American correspondent who spent time in the city before the war, has returned to write about the Allied triumph while pursuing a more personal quest…” The Good German by Joseph Kanon |
Goodbye to Berlin
 | “First published in 1934, Goodbye to Berlin has been popularized on stage and screen by Julie Harris in I Am a Camera and Liza Minelli in Cabaret. Isherwood magnificently captures 1931 Berlin: charming, with its avenues and cafés; marvelously grotesque, with its nightlife and dreamers; dangerous, with its vice and intrigue; powerful and seedy, with its mobs and millionaires ― this was the period when Hitler was beginning his move to power…” Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood |
City of Women: A Novel
 | “It is 1943—the height of the Second World War. With the men away at the front, Berlin has become a city of women…” City of Women: A Novel by David R. Gillham |
A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City: A Diary
 | “A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice. For eight weeks in 1945, as Berlin fell to the Russian army, a young woman kept a daily record of life in her apartment building and among its residents…” A Woman in Berlin by Anonymous (Author) and Philip Boehm (Translator) |
Effi Briest (Penguin Classics)
 | “Unworldly young Effi Briest is married off to Baron von Innstetten, an austere and ambitious civil servant twice her age, who has little time for his new wife. Isolated and bored, Effi finds comfort and distraction in a brief liaison with Major Crampas, a married man with a dangerous reputation…” Effi Briest by Theodor Fontane (Author), Helen Chambers (Editor, Introduction, Translator), Hugh Rorrison (Translator) |
Arwed Messmer – Reenactment MfS
see also:
“The ones who didn’t get away: New book reveals the haunting pictures of people caught by the Stasi trying to flee East Germany across the Berlin Wall ” (DailyMail)
Book shop:
Hatje Cantz Verlag > Fotografie
www.hatjecantz.de/arwed-messmer-6280-0.html
You know of any other interesting Berlin Books that you would like to see here listed? Please feel free to add your suggestions in the comments or through the contact page. Thank You!