Fiction set in pre 1989 Berlin?

[EnglishGirlApproximately]

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!

Have you read Alone in Berlin?

The Wall Jumper - Peter Schneider. I haven't actually read it - picked it up in a charity shop and haven't got round to it yet!

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?

Brandenburg by Henry Porter. One of my favourites by him.

Read the Game, Set & Match Trilogy by Len Deighton. Amazing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Game?wprov=sfti1

Oh these all look great I'll need to narrow the list down. Brandenburg is included on Kindle unlimited so I'll start with that while I'm here!

The others by Sheena Kalayil is a book set in Berlin before the wall came down- it’s on this years women’s prize for fiction longlist and worth a read imo.

Deborah Levy's "The Man Who Saw Everything" is mostly set in 1988 East Berlin. It's a good read and was nominated in 2019 for the Booker, the Goldsmith Prize and the George Orwell Prize for Political Fiction.

Ken Follet’s Century trilogy is set across England, Russia, USA and Germany across the 20th century. Really fascinating. The third book covers life in Berlin in the shadow of the wall.

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.

If you want something funny, read Short End of the Sonnenallee by Thomas Brussig. There's also a film, I think the film may have even come first. Enjoy Berlin! 🇩🇪

The Short End of the Sonnenallee Thomas Brussig
Berl8n Alexanderplatz Alfred Döblin

Not fiction but Eine Frau in Berlin is excellent (I guess it’s A Woman in Berlin?). Also MangelExemplar - one of the best books I’ve ever read (sorry don’t know the English.) It’s about a girl with mental illness. I have a few more on the shelf at home, will let you know.

Oh and the books by Wladimir Kaminer are supposed to be very good. Russian Disco is set in Berlin

This is an amazing book, though quite distressing.
My suggestion is "The Past is Myself" which is a memoir by Christabel Bielenberg. I know you asked for fiction OP but it's really good. She was an Anglo-Irish woman from an aristocratic family who married a German lawyer, Peter Bielenberg, in the early 1930s. When the war started she was stuck in Germany. They were on the periphery of the group that were involved in the July 20 plot.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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:(

Christopher Isherwood

Going a bit further back…

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.