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Original poster

Fiction set in pre 1989 Berlin?

65 replies

EnglishGirlApproximately · 25/05/2026 21:11

Currently enjoying a city break in Berlin and finding the reminders of life divided by the wall endlessly fascinating. Can anyone recommend a novel.set during this time? Ideally based on normal people, every day life - nothing too schmaltzy but not too serious either. Happy for it to be a thriller or at a push a romance as long as it's well written. Thanks!

OP posts:
Papyrophile · 26/05/2026 15:34

The fanclub spotted this simultaneously.... love it!

Ohwhatfuckeryitistoride · 26/05/2026 15:33

Papyrophile · 26/05/2026 13:57

No one has mentioned Philip Kerr's 'Bernie Gunter' series of crime novels yet. The earliest are the best. Quite dark but very readable, and interesting on the early years of National Socialism.

Sorry- x posted.

Ohwhatfuckeryitistoride · 26/05/2026 15:32

Berlin Noir series by Philip Kerr. Ex policeman turned detective in 30s Berlin through the war and after.

Papyrophile · 26/05/2026 13:57

No one has mentioned Philip Kerr's 'Bernie Gunter' series of crime novels yet. The earliest are the best. Quite dark but very readable, and interesting on the early years of National Socialism.

Guineapigs4ever · 26/05/2026 09:40

The House by the Lake by Thomas Harding is fascinating/riveting

Fiction set in pre 1989 Berlin?
Reader19 · 26/05/2026 09:14

EnglishGirlApproximately · 25/05/2026 21:22

As far as I can remember I haven't read anything set in Berlin so I'll check them both out thanks. Is The Wall Jumper based on the story of the soldier who jumped the wall in the famous image?

Not as far as I'm aware. It has a number of characters who jump the Wall, for different reasons. I'm not very helpful here as I haven't read it yet, but here are some more helpful links!

Here's the blurb: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/57480/the-wall-jumper-by-schneider-peter/9780141187983

Here's a piece by Ian McEwan on the book: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/oct/22/featuresreviews.guardianreview31

This thread has reminded me that I'd really like to read it. And it is a short novel.

FruAashild · 26/05/2026 08:39

Another vote here for The Short End of the Sonnenallee by Thomas Brussig. Set in the early 80s in East Berlin.

Further back if you want to read some books set in prewar Nazi Germany then read Irmgard Keun. Her books are short but capture 1930s Germany so vividly. The Artificial Silk Girl is partly set in Berlin but After Midnight or A Child of All Nations are probably her best novels.

Bit different but the graphic novel Madgermanes by Birgit Weyhe about Mozambican workers in East Germany who went there in the 1970s.

Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck. Another East Berlin novel about an age gap relationship.

Halfhardy · 26/05/2026 07:08

The Silence Inbetween by Josie Ferguson. The same family and two threads, the aftermath of World War 2, when the Russians entered the city and 1961 when the Berlin Wall was erected.
A Woman in Berlin mentioned up thread is listed as source material as is the BBC podcast Tunnel 29, which is worth a listen.

Original poster
EnglishGirlApproximately · 26/05/2026 06:47

Gosh thanks all, some brilliant recommendations to keep me busy. Berlin is getting under my skin a little bit and we're already planning a return visit.

OP posts:
Dontlletmedownbruce · 26/05/2026 04:37

RomainingCalm · 25/05/2026 23:28

I read it a long time ago but ‘The Moment’ by Douglas Kennedy might be worth a look.

Yes I was coming on to recommend this. It's a great read. Berlin serves as a backdrop and it's more about the characters than political. I thought it gave great insight into what life was like in the 80s, it's mostly set in the West. Until I read it I never thought of how restricted life was in the west too, this tiny island within East Germany. People may have been at liberty to leave but most couldn't afford it.

Spartak · 26/05/2026 04:23

I enjoyed the David Young series of novels which were set in cold war East Germany.

OvernightBloats · 26/05/2026 02:59

Another vote for Stasiland - a really memorable read.

JingsMahBucket · 26/05/2026 02:50

What a great thread @EnglishGirlApproximately. Thanks for starting it.

CatsLikeBoxes · 26/05/2026 01:59

Confession with blue horses by Sophie hardach is a book of before and after 1989 - the main character visits Berlin and is trying to unravel what happened when she was a young child when her family tried to defect

Melbournegal · 26/05/2026 01:26

Stasiland by Anna Funder is a beautifully written book though non fiction not a novel.
Not sure how easy it would be to find now as it came out in 2006 but there was also a brilliant German film “The Lives of Others “ about the cult of the Stasi and how it was normalised to spy on one another.

SnowFrogJelly · 26/05/2026 01:07

Going a bit further back…

SnowFrogJelly · 26/05/2026 01:07

Christopher Isherwood

crackofdoom · 26/05/2026 00:14

User478 · 26/05/2026 00:06

Not a book, but Good Bye, Lenin! Is a great film set in 1989/1990s Berlin.

I looked for it last year and couldn't find it on a single streaming service:(

User478 · 26/05/2026 00:06

Not a book, but Good Bye, Lenin! Is a great film set in 1989/1990s Berlin.

1dayatatime · 26/05/2026 00:03

For a TV series I would really recommend Deutschland 83 and 86.

Sinkingfeeling952 · 25/05/2026 23:58

For mild thriller / romance, Mandy Robotham does a few different ones.

For crime thriller, the various Stasi books by David Young are excellent

crackofdoom · 25/05/2026 23:46

9021Pho · 25/05/2026 22:27

I used to live in Berlin and completely get your fascination. Its a very enigmatic city. I had a beautiful flat on Linienstraße in Mitte and I think about that place all the time.

Anyway, I know its not a book but I really think you should watch the Wim Wenders film, der himmel über berlin (the wings of desire). It came out in 1987 and it's a fascinating historical record of the city just before the wall was about to fall. It's a very special film. Nick Cave has a cameo, he plays himself.

In terms of books, these were written ahead of the Wall going up so have nothing to do with cold war politics and preserving the Soviet backed Eastern Bloc but:

Gone to Ground - Marie Jalowicz Simon.
Memoir set in Berlin during World War II. The book tells the true story of a young Jewish woman who survives Nazi Germany by disappearing into the city and living under false identities in a series of hiding places.

Alexanderplatz, a novel by Alfred Döblin which follows an ex-convict trying to rebuild his life in working-class Berlin during the Weimar Republic.

Both are outstanding. Both quite heavy though so not for the faint hearted.

Edited

I love Wings of Desire. The bit where the old man is sitting on the sofa in the middle of the grassy, abandoned Potsdamer Platz, and in his imagination there's old film of how it was before the war- full of people, shops and trams. When I first knew it it was immediately after the Wall had come down- still grassy, but full of anarchists living in trucks and bauwagens. And now it's full of shiny new buildings.

I haven't got a book recommendation, but I can recommend a TV series- Deutschland 83.

FlippantlyShe · 25/05/2026 23:32

Several of Hugo Hamilton’s novels are Berlin-set.

RomainingCalm · 25/05/2026 23:28

I read it a long time ago but ‘The Moment’ by Douglas Kennedy might be worth a look.

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