Berlin Shuffle

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 during the Great Depression. Old man Sonnenberg was blinded during WWI. The beggar Fundholz, who had a normal life just a decade earlier, roams Berlin with dim-witted Tonnchen, gone mad from a tragic incident in his youth. There’s also Minchen Lindner, now a mistress to a wealthy man after her bailiff father’s fall from grace, and handsome Wilhelm Winter, who becomes a pimp out of economic necessity. The unemployed schizophrenic Grissmann was fired over misplacing 20 Reichsmarks several years before, while Frau Fliebusch still believes everyone is lying to her about her husband’s death in the war. The plot threads are seamlessly stitched together by the end, when the characters converge at a raucous bar on the edge of Berlin full of others down on their luck and those preying off them. As schnapps flows freely, Wilhelm invites Minchen into a meeting with other pimps; then an argument between Grissmann and Sonnenberg turns tragic and sends the cast into a chilling and vividly portrayed frenzy. With profound insight, Boschwitz evokes a country’s descent into madness. (Dec.)