Berlin Shuffle. A Novel (en Inglés) - Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz;Philip Boehm

A prophetic lost classic from interwar Germany, following a group of Berliners navigating economic turmoil and the rise of fascism, now translated into English for the first time

Berlin in the 1920s is the largest city in Europe, a cultural mecca, and a political mess: a hedonistic Babylon, though there’s little glamour for the hundreds of thousands out of work, the war wounded, the prostitutes, and the beggars. Come evening they too want to shed their cares at the Jolly Huntsman pub, where they gather to drink, dance, and reassert their pride.

But there’s disaster lurking in the alleys and flophouses, a disaster that the twenty-two-year-old author Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz saw coming for his nation. In this dark comedy of petty theft, soapbox speeches, and bar fights is the disarray of a country devouring itself.

Tragically, Germany’s self-destruction engulfed the author, who was killed five years after finishing this novel. When Boschwitz’s The Passenger was rediscovered in 2021, it was heralded as a masterpiece that captured the terror of the Nazi reign. Now, Berlin Shuffle—his literary debut from 1937, finally available in English, with a preface by the preeminent translator Philip Boehm—brings to life the society that would enable fascism’s takeover.

The triumph of one of world literature’s spectacular talents, Berlin Shuffle is a dire warning sent from a pivotal moment in history to our own time.

Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz was born in Berlin in 1915. He fled Germany in 1935 and wrote his novels while studying at the Sorbonne in Paris. In 1939, he settled in England, but after the war broke out, England interned him as an “enemy alien”—despite his Jewish background—and shipped him to Australia. In 1942, Boschwitz was allowed to return to England, but his ship was torpedoed by a German submarine, and he was killed at the age of twenty-seven.

Philip Boehm has translated more than thirty novels and plays by German and Polish writers, including Herta Müller, Franz Kafka, and Hanna Krall. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, as well as numerous awards, including the Helen & Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize and the Ungar German Translation Award from the American Translators Association. He also works as a theater director and playwright.

"Chilling and vividly portrayed . . . This clear-eyed novel from Boschwitz (The Passenger), who died in 1942, excavates the resentments of a broad cast of German characters as the country slides toward fascism. . . . The plot threads are seamlessly stitched together. . . . Profound."
—Publishers Weekly

"[An] omi­nous vision of pre-Nazi Ger­many—a Ger­many that would trag­i­cal­ly ful­fill Boschwitz’s pre­dic­tion"
—Jewish Book Council

"A welcome addition to Boschwitz’s oeuvre. . . The book’s greatest strength is showing, in day-to-day terms . . . an atmosphere in which a fascist government could arise. . . . In that sense, many of the novel’s concerns overlap with those of the present day."
—Kirkus

Praise for Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz

“Stunning . . . Clairvoyant . . . One comes away marveling not only at Boschwitz’s craftsmanship but at what can only be called his human spirit.”
—Ruth Margalit, The New York Review of Books

“A writer of great insight and talent.”
—Adam LeBor, Financial Times

“Uncannily prescient . . . It’s as if Boschwitz foresaw the complicity of the millions who were bystanders to the wickedness that took place right in front of them.”
–Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian

“What Boschwitz saw clearly enough was the utter despoliation of one’s identity, of one’s trust in the world, and ultimately of one’s very humanity.”
–André Aciman

“An author who might have become a household name.”
–Toby Lichtig, The Wall Street Journal